Читать книгу A Journey Through Care of Magical Creatures - Pottermore Publishing - Страница 3

We live in a time when we can watch, spellbound, astonishing video footage of animals from all over the world at any time: from the depths of the ocean to mountain peaks; from the heat of the desert to the cold of the Arctic; from the midst of the rainforest to an isolated island.

However, for millennia, people could only read strange tales or hear intriguing stories of creatures they were unlikely to ever see. Even the images they saw were often painted by artists who had never laid eyes on what they were depicting.

As the world was explored, tales of amazing new animals spread, and information – backed up by emerging scientific reasoning – was shared more widely. Books were filled with wondrous creatures and ‘cabinets of curiosity’ were created – collections of strange wonders from all over the world, mixing the real and the imagined: dragons and elephants, unicorns and narwhals.

At Hogwarts, Harry and his friends were given Care of Magical Creatures lessons, which introduced them to all manner of fantastic beasts: from unpredictable Hippogriffs that demanded a fair degree of caution and respect, to – frankly – repellent and downright dangerous Blast-Ended Skrewts.

People have always been fascinated with exotic animal life and strange, powerful, clever creatures with abilities that ignite the imagination, but today it’s relatively easy to distinguish truth from myth. Not that long ago, however, it wasn’t, and people were much more willing to believe in the existence of things of which they hadn’t seen any actual evidence.