have heard many
well-authenticated stories of the bite being not only very dangerous,
but in some instances fatal. I have specimens of the animal in my
collection. It is called here the geitje."

"Well, it is rather remarkable, but we have in India a small lizard,
called the gecko by the natives, which is said to be equally venomous.
I presume it must be the same animal, and it is singular that the names
should vary so little. I have never seen an instance of its poisonous
powers, but I have seen a whole company of sepoys run out of their
quarters because they have heard the animal make its usual cry in the
thatch of the building; they say that it drops down upon people from the
roof."

"Probably the same animal; and a strong corroboration that the report of
its being venomous is with good foundation."

"And yet if we were to make the assertion in England, we should in all
probability not be believed."

"Not by many, I grant--not by those who only know a little; but by those
who are well informed, you probably would be. The fact is from a too
ready credulity, we have now turned to almost a total scepticism, unless
we have ocular demonstration. In the times of Marco Polo, Sir John
Mandeville, and others,--say in the fifteenth century, when there were
but few travellers and but little education, a traveller might assert
almost anything, and gain credence; latterly a traveller hardly dare
assert anything. Le Vaillant and Bruce, who travelled in the South and
North of Africa, were both stigmatised as liars, when they published
their accounts of what they had seen, and yet every tittle has since
been proved to be correct. However, as people now are better informed,
they do not reject so positively; for they have certain rules to guide
them between the possible and the impossible."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean, for instance, that if a person was to tell me that he had seen
a mermaid, with the body of a woman and the scaly tail of a fish, I
should at once say that I could not believe him. And why? because it is
contrary to the laws of nature. The two component parts of the animal
could not be combined, as the upper portion would belong to the
mammalia, and be a hot-blooded animal, the lower to a cold-blooded class
of natural history. Such a junction would, therefore, be impossible.
But there are, I have no doubt, many animals still undiscovered, or
rather still unknown to Europeans, the description of which m