It contained long extracts from the "Romance of Alexander," which was the delight of the grown-up children of the Middle Ages.
"Dragons," says this narrative, "are larger than all other serpents, and longer....

They fly through the air, which is darkened by the disgorging of their stench and venom ...

This venom is so deadly that if a man should be touched by it or come nigh it, it would seem to him a burning fire, and would raise his skin in great blisters, as though he had been scalded." And the author adds: "The sea is swollen up by their venom." Dragons have a crest, sharp talons, and a hissing throat, and are almost unconquerable.

Albertus Magnus tells us, however, that magicians, when they wish to subdue them, beat as loudly as they can on drums, and that the dragon, imagining that it is the roll of thunder, which they greatly dread, let themselves be handled quietly and are taken.
The enemy of this winged reptile is the elephant, which sometimes succeeds in crushing it by falling on it with all its weight; but most times it is killed by the dragon, which feeds on its blood, of which the freshness allays the intolerable burning caused by its own venom.
Next to this monster comes the gryphon, a combination of the quadruped and the bird, for it has the body of the lion and the head and talons of the eagle.

Then the basilisk, regarded as the king of serpents; it is four feet long, and has a tail as thick as a tree, and spotted with white.