238 DRACUT which led to the formation and adoption of his code are unknown. It is the opinion of most writers that he framed it in accordance with a spontaneous demand of the people, who were weary of lawlessness. He took the citizen at the moment of his birth, prescribed the man- ner in which he should be nourished and educated, and followed him with directions through the epochs of life. The penalty of death was to be inflicted for almost every crime. The slightest offence, he said, deserved death, and he knew no punishment more se- vere for the greatest. He carried his severity to a fantastic extreme, ordering punishment to be inflicted upon a statue whose fall had in- jured a man. So violent a code could not last, and within 30 years Athens was again in an- archy. Draco died at the culmination of his glory, upon the isle of ^Egina. Suidas says that as he entered the theatre there and received the acclamations of the people, he was stifled amid the mass of caps, robes, and cloaks, which in accordance with custom they threw upon him as a mark of honor. DRACFT, a town of Middlesex co., Mass., on the N. bank of Merrimack river, opposite Low- ell, with which it is connected by two bridges; pop. in 1870, 2,078. It borders on New Hamp- shire, and is traversed by Beaver river, which supplies it with water power. It is mainly an agricultural town, but contains two woollen mills, one of which has 19 sets of cards, 82 looms, and a capital of $500,000. There is also a paper mill. DRAGOMAN, an oriental word signifying in- terpreter. It is applied, in the Ottoman em- pire and the courts of the further East and of Barbary, to men who know several lan- guages, and act as interpreters between for- eigners and the natives. What was former- ly a necessity for commercial relations, has since become so for purposes of diplomacy. At Constantinople the office of prime dragoman, through whom the sultan receives the com- munications of Christian ambassadors, is one of the most important of the Sublime Porte. Dragomans are also attached to each of the foreign legations at oriental courts, and as such they enjoy the privileges of diplomatic officers. The French government trains a number of young men to fill these positions. DRAGON, an animal often alluded to in the Bible, supposed by some to be the crocodile, and by others to refer in some passages to a rcies of giant serpent, or to a wild beast like jackal or wolf. According to Eobinson's Calmet, it is not improbable that St. John had in mind the enormous boa of Africa and the Kast when he described the symbolic great red dragon. In mythology, the dragon is a fan- tastic animal, variously represented as of im- mense size, with wings, thorny crests, powerful and a snaky tail and motion. He figured in the ancient conceptions of the Orient and of the classical nations, was a familiar subject in the middle a^es. is still an emblem of universal DRAGON use among the Chinese, and seems to have ex- isted almost everywhere except in nature. The pterodactyl and ramphorhynchus of the meso- zoic age, though probably extinct long before the era of man, would have furnished excellent foundations for the dragon of tradition. DRAGON (draco, Linn.), an iguanian lizard of the subfamily of acrodonts, or those having the teeth implanted in the bony substance of the jaws, to which they firmly adhere by the base of the roots. The head is triangular, flattened, and covered with small irregular scales, sometimes ridged; the small circular and tubular nostrils open at the end of the ob- tuse snout; the tongue is thick and spongy, with a round single extremity; the anterior teeth are three or four, and resemble incisors ; behind these the median ones are conical, like canines, and there are generally two pairs in each jaw; the posterior teeth, or molars, are tricuspid and compressed ; under the neck is a long dewlap, and on each side a trianglar cu- taneous fold placed horizontally, all three hav- ing in their thickness a process from the hyoid bone ; there is generally a small cervical crest, Draco fimbriatus. While some species have no external ear, in others there is a small circular membranous tympanum. The neck is slightly compressed ; the body has a central dorsal depression, and is covered above and below with small imbri- cated ridged scales. Dragons are at once dis- tinguished from all other reptiles of this order by the horizontal expansion of the skin of the sides into a kind of wing, supported chiefly by the first six false ribs, which are extended horizontally outward. This flying membrane is semicircular, about as wide as the arm is long, free in front, but attached behind to the interior part of the thigh ; in a state of rest the animal keeps it folded like a fan along the body, and when leaping from branch to branch spreads it like a parachute to sustain it; it cannot be moved as an active organ of flight, like the wing of a bird or the membrane of the bat. The fore and hind limbs, each with five toes, are of about the same length, the lat- ter being flattened, with the posterior border fringed with serrated scales; there are no femoral pores; the tail is very long, slender,
