Chinese mythology merely fantastic types of the bestiary sort. Sometimes the dragon is considered part of this category, related to it, or the ruler of all the swimming and crawling folk. This may include the giant marine turtle or tortoise Ao, the Bashe snake reputed to swallow elephants, a nine-headed snake monster reminiscent of the hydra known as Xiangliu, and the White Serpent from the novel "Legend of the White Snake". Various birds are found in Chinese mythology, some of them obviously based on real birds, other ones obviously not, and some in-between. The Crane is an example of a real type
Germanic peoples 1814, and was in full bloom by the 1830s, with Jacob Grimm's "Deutsche Mythologie" giving an extensive account of reconstructed Germanic mythology and composing a German dictionary ("Deutsches Wörterbuch") of Germanic etymology. Jacob Grimm also coauthored with his brother Wilhelm, the famous Grimm's Fairy Tales. Apart from linguistic studies, the subject of what became of the Roman era Germanic tribes, and how they influenced the Middle Ages and the development of modern Western culture was a subject discussed in the Enlightenment by such as writers as Montesquieu and Giambattista Vico. Later still, the development of Germanic studies as an academic