i 9 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ment of the subject the conventional system of pictographs whereby 

 the Zufii sacred orders illustrate their mythological ideas. It is first 

 to a close study of the mythology and theogony of the Zuiiis, and 

 then to that of the conventional forms of art among these and kin- 

 dred peoples, that we are to look for the key to the mysterious and 

 unnumbered pictographs of the great Southwest. 



Interesting for comparison with Eastern mythology is the study of 

 the phallic and the serpent symbolism as they occur in highly devel- 

 oped forms among the Zuni Indians. Yet, again, interesting because 

 of the light that it throws upon the development of human religions 

 and mythologies is the study of the influence of environment, physical, 

 biologic, and sociologic, as exemplified by the religion and mythology 

 of the Zunis. 



I regret most deeply that in the limited time allowed me to-day 

 I can not go into a discussion of these various questions, and into 

 a production of the hundreds of facts illustrative of them which I 

 have in rny possession ; but that I have time only to add that, as 

 further illustrative of the connection between the Zuni sociologic and 

 the Zuni mythologic systems is the fact that no general names for 

 chiefs of all the departments ecclesiastical, martial, and political 

 are to be found in their language, nor is there a general name for their 

 god-priests, hero, demon, animal, elemental, celestial, or tutelar. Yet 

 the term awa nu thla includes the political and martial chiefs in Zuni 

 government, just as does the name kHapin a hd i include their repre- 

 sentatives, the sacred water and prey-gods, of Zuni mythology. 



-<++- 



ASTRONOMICAL PANICS. 



By DANIEL KIEKWOOD. 



WHEREVER science has not been cultivated, all new and start- 

 ling appearances in the sky are regarded as supernatural. But 

 a few years since a shower of meteoric stones fell in India, the fall 

 being attended by terrific explosions. The alarmed inhabitants of the 

 district believed these masses of rock to have been thrown by their 

 deities from the Himalaya Mountains, and with great veneration gath- 

 ered up the fragments to be kept as objects of religious worship. Nor 

 need we smile at this example of recent superstition. In the most 

 civilized countries of the ancient world such phenomena as the aurora 

 borealis, total eclipses, comets, and meteoric showers, were viewed as 

 miraculous displays of divine power, and generally as forerunners of 

 impending disasters. A brief account of some of the panics thus pro- 

 duced may not be without interest. 



No one who has seen the more brilliant displays of the northern 



