Students can thank Gordon Sleete for much of what we know about dragons today.

The Charmed Forests of Madagascar were inhabited almost entirely by dragons

in the 1920s, and Gordon Sleete was the first man to live among them and walk

away unscathed. Sleete spent a year in Madagascar living, as he relates in 300 Days

With Dragons, with a family of twenty-four Chinese Golden Dragons; he met dragons

from more than three dozen other families during the course of his year on the island.

Sleete was a keen observer of dragon manners and customs, and the surge of interest

prompted by his stories led to the passage in 1945 of the Pan-African Dragon Pact.

Sleete disappeared over the Atlantic while returning from a visit to Sweden in 1952.

It was whispered, even at the time, that Sleete was an animage, and had discovered

a way to turn himself into a dragon. Some now believe that Sleete actually was

a dragon that had somehow disguised himself as a wizard, though most

Transfiguration theorists believe this to be impossible.