e says can ever be believed.
This leads us to the conclusion that because she said or inferred that
there was no snake, we should look for one--and expect to find it, too.
"Now let me digress. I live, and have for many years lived, in
Derbyshire, a county more celebrated for its caves than any other county
in England. I have been through them all, and am familiar with every
turn of them; as also with other great caves in Kentucky, in France, in
Germany, and a host of other places--in many of these are tremendously
deep caves of narrow aperture, which are valued by intrepid explorers,
who descend narrow gullets of abysmal depth--and sometimes never return.
In many of the caverns in the Peak I am convinced that some of the
smaller passages were used in primeval times as the lairs of some of the
great serpents of legend and tradition. It may have been that such
caverns were formed in the usual geologic way--bubbles or flaws in the
earth's crust--which were later used by the monsters of the period of the
young world. It may have been, of course, that some of them were worn
originally by water; but in time they all found a use when suitable for
living monsters.
"This brings us to another point, more difficult to accept and understand
than any other requiring belief in a base not usually accepted, or indeed
entered on--whether such abnormal growths could have ever changed in
their nature. Some day the study of metabolism may progress so far as to
enable us to accept structural changes proceeding from an intellectual or
moral base. We may lean towards a belief that great animal strength may
be a sound base for changes of all sorts. If this be so, what could be a
more fitting subject than primeval monsters whose strength was such as to
allow a survival of thousands of years? We do not know yet if brain can
increase and develop independently of other parts of the living
structure.
"After all, the mediaeval belief in the Philosopher's Stone which could
transmute metals, has its counterpart in the accepted theory of
metabolism which changes living tissue. In an age of investigation like
our own, when we are returning to science as the base of wonders--almost
of miracles--we should be slow to refuse to accept facts, however
impossible they may seem to be.
"Let us suppose a monster of the early days of the world--a dragon of the
prime--of vast age running into thousands of years, to whom had been
conveyed in some wa
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