he sets fire to things, and altogether he's an expensive beast
Aren't you, Fido?"

"Yep," barked the dragon.

"Now, over there," continued the guide, patting the dragon on the
head, whereat the fearful beast wagged his tail and breathed a
thousand pounds of steam from his nostrils to express his pleasure.
"Over there are the fire-breathing bulls--all the animals here are
fire-breathing. The bulls give us a lot of trouble. You can't feed 'em
on coal, because their teeth are not strong enough to chew it; and you
can't feed 'em on hay, because they'd set fire to it the minute they
breathed on it; and you can't put 'em out to pasture because they'd
wither up a sixty-acre lot in ten minutes. It's an actual fact that we
have to send for Jason three times a day to come here and feed them.
He's the only person about who can do it, and how he does it no one
knows. He pats them on the neck, and they stop breathing fire. That's
all we know."

"But they must eat something. What does Jason give them?" I demanded.

"We've had to invent a food for them," said Cephalus. "Dr. AEsculapius
did it. It's a solution of hay, clover, grass, and paraffine mixed
with asbestos."

"Paraffine?" I cried. "Why, that's extremely inflammable."

"So are the bulls," was Cephalus's rejoinder. "They counteract each
other." I gazed at the animals with admiration. They were undoubtedly
magnificent beasts, and they truly breathed fire. Their nostrils
suggested the flames that are emitted from the huge naphtha jets that
are used to light modern circuses in country towns, and as for their
mouths, any one who can imagine a bull with a pair of gas-logs
illuminating his reflective smile, instead of teeth, may gain a
comprehensive idea of the picture that confronted me.

I had hardly finished looking at these, when Cephalus, impatient to
be through with me, as guides often are with tourists, observed:

"There is the ph[oe]nix."

I turned instantly. I have always wished to see the ph[oe]nix. A bird
having apparently the attractive physique of a broiler deliberately
sitting on a bonfire had appealed strongly to my interest as well as
to my appetite.

"Dear me!" said I. "He's not handsome, is he?"

He was not; resembling an ordinary buzzard with wings outstretched
sitting upon that kind of emberesque fire that induces a man in a
library to think mournfully about the past, and convinces
him--alas!--that if he had the time he could write immortal poetry.