A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 43 



genealogies for ten generations. There is nevertheless something in 

 other accounts related by them which may possibly suggest traditions 

 relating to changes that had taken place upon the globe in the past, 

 and ti-aditions that might have come down from the glacial period, 

 when Nature conducted her operations upon such a stupendous scale. 

 It would appear as though their rude intelligence had argued what 

 would take place in the future from what had transpired in the past. 

 For instance, it was their belief at the time the missionary came 

 among them, that all of the present race would become extinct, and 

 the earth be broken up by some widely operating force, and then puri- 

 fied by a vast flood of water, after which the dust of the earth would 

 be blown together and become more beautiful than before, as the 

 rocks would disappear, being covered with verdure. Now, in this was 

 their fancy stimulated by traditions that had come down to them 

 from glacial ancestors, concerning what we call geological epochs, or 

 was this also taught them by the Northmen ? It is, perhaps, to be 

 regretted that we have so few of these relations by the early Green- 

 lander, as they might have proved useful in connection with the at- 

 tempt to solve the question of his origin. Nevertheless, the case is 

 by no means hopeless, and testimony may yet be discovered that will 

 connect him beyond question with the glacial man. 



A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CEOWS. 



Br W. H. GAEDNEK, M. D. 



PERHAPS there are but few persons who have read Poe's " Ra- 

 ven," or Dickens's "Barnaby Rudge," who have not felt some 

 curiosity to learn why ravens and crows, more than any other birds, 

 should be invested with characters so ominous and demoniacal. And 

 not only do these birds bear this ominous reputation in poetry and 

 fiction, and in the legends and folk-lore of many of the nations of the 

 earth, but by the unlearned they are still looked upon as too weird 

 and uncanny for ordinary birds ; and many a person can be found 

 even in this age of positivism who would consider a crow lighting 

 upon his house-top as certain a harbinger of evil as Hesiod did, seven 

 hundred and fifty years before Christ, when he said to his brother 

 Perses, " Nor when building a house, leave it not unfinished, lest, 

 mark you, perching upon it, the cawing crow should croak." * 



In this age, our plane of thought is so far above that of our rude 

 and ignorant ancestors that their superstitions and myths seem too 

 puerile to merit notice ; but when we study them attentively, with 



* Hesiod, " Works and Days." 



