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Mythical Monsters (Secret doctrine reference series)

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This book was originally written in 1886 so parts of it are greatly outdated; however as a whole it is really not too bad for being as old as it is. The stated goal of finding fact in the myths and legends of people is consistent with the present day stated goals of cryptozoologists. Much of the book deals with the search for dragons in mythology and the texts he scrutinizes are 4000 years old and translated from Chinese. Much confusion results as some dragons are pythons, some crocodiles, some Iguanadon (for want of a better translation, probably actually referring to the Komodo dragon which was still undiscovered until about 25 years later) and some myth. The unicorn is also similarly treated however one passage mentions "in Tibet it is called serou" and later (1937?) a type of goat-antelope called the serow was discovered there. It did not have a single horn but was obviously the animal indicated. The sea serpent chapter deals with more recent sitings instead of texts several thousand years old and seem more strongly to indicate the prescence of an unknown animal compared to some of the other chapters. This book is one of the earliest works in the field of what would later be called cryptozoology and proves interesting in that context as the discoveries of the komodo dragon and serow are hinted at in this book.