The Evolution of the Dragon

The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance of the part played by the Great Mother especially in her Babylonian avatar as Tiamat in the evolution of the famous wonder-beast. Under the stimulus of Dr. Rendel Harris's Rylands Lecture on The Cult of Aphrodite I therefore devoted my next address (14 November 1917) to the Birth of Aphrodite and a general discussion of the problems of Olympian obstetrics.Each of these addresses was delivered as an informal demonstration of large series of lantern projections; and as Mr. Guppy insisted upon the publication of the lectures in the Bulletin it became necessary as a rule many months after the delivery of each address to rearrange my material and put into the form of a written narrative the story which had previously been told mainly by pictures and verbal comments upon them.In making these elaborations additional facts were added and new points of view emerged so that the printed statements bear little resemblance to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration unless every one of the numerous pictures is reproduced.