266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nouncecl it again and again ; but, before such arguments can influence the masses, 

 they must cease to seek their paradise in the clouds and their authorities in 

 Palestine. 



In the general diffusion of knowledge, only the newspaper-educated 



natives of our Northeastern cities can compare with the Saracens of the thirteenth 

 century. Under her last caliphs, Cordova alone had fourteen lyceums and nine 

 hundred and fifty primary schools ; the transcription of the ancient classics em- 

 ployed an army of copyists, and the provincial governors vied in patronizing 

 men of letters. From Leon to Granada every hamlet had its own library, and 

 the lord of every castle a private cabinet of curios or an astronomical observatory. 

 But during the next two centuries a horde of ecclesiastic Vandals marched in the 

 wake of the Christian armies, and special commissioners of the Casa Santa trav- 

 eled from place to place, burning Unitarians and destroying Arabian manu- 

 scripts. 



"What literary treasures may have perished in that way ! The Spanish Moris- 

 coes, the last free and manly nation of the Old World, succumbed to the hirelings 

 of the Holy Inquisition; but Providence generally remedies a calamity of that 

 sort, and the fall of Granada coincided with the discovery of a New World. 



A Maori Cosmogony. Eichard Oberliinder, in his " Strange Peoples," 



gives the following as a cosmogony of the New-Zealanders : Maui was a hero 

 who performed as wondei-ful labors as the Grecian Heracles. He was not only 

 the inventor of the arts of making boats and building houses and the like, but 

 he appointed the paths of the sun and the moon, and was the creator of the 

 earth, which he fished out of the sea in this way : He said one clay to his five 

 brothers, who were devoted fishermen, that he would go with them and catch 

 so large a fish that they would not be able to hold him. Now, because they 

 knew what an enchanter he was, and were afraid of his art, they were not will- 

 ing to take him in the boat with them. Nevertheless, Maui went with them. 

 He changed himself into a bird, flew into the canoe, and did not make himself 

 known till they had got into the open sea. When they had got far out into the 

 sea, Maui wanted to fish ; he had a precious fish-hook with him, which he had 

 made out of his grandfather's jaw-bone; but his brothers, to keep him from 

 fishing, refused to give him any bait. Then Maui beat his face till his nose 

 bled, and soaked some tow that he found in the canoe with the blood. That 

 was the bait. Maui threw out his hook, and it was not long before he had a 

 bite, with a tug that made the brothers afraid the boat would be upset. So they 

 cried out, "Let go, Maui! " "Maui never lets go of what he holds," was the 

 answer, and it has become a proverb with the Maoris. He pulled and pulled at 

 the line till he pulled up a land. ^ Ranga ichenna! " exclaimed the brothers, 

 "the fish is a land! " Maui asked them if they knew the name of the fish, and, 

 when they said no, he told them " Eaha wheima" (the looked-for land.) After 

 the fish was pulled up, the brothers hastened to divide it among themselves ; 

 they pulled and tore in every direction ; hence come the inequalities of the island. 

 The canoe was stranded by the rising of the land, and the Maoris say now that 

 it lies on the top of Mount Iknurangi, near the eastern cape of the island, where 

 Maui is also buried. After this story, the northern island of New Zealand is 

 called AM na Maid (the fish of Maui). 



" They sow not, they reap not, they trust in Providence, and honor you 



by sharing the fruits of your worldly industry," is the gist of St. Francis of 

 Assisi's argument in favor of the mendicant friars. The Hindoos are consistent 



