SOME ANALOGIES AND HOMOLOGIES. 91 



It was further observed by him that, inasmuch as there are 

 pairs or opposites in all things, there is a good and an evil spirit ; 

 yet both of these are appointed and controlled by the Great Mys- 

 tery. There were no angels in the Indian's theology. As there 

 is a spirit of antagonism among animals, so also the Indian be- 

 lieved that the elements do often wage war upon each other, and 

 sometimes upon the animals. For instance, it was supposed that 

 the thunder-bird often goes upon the warpath, traveling over 

 vast tracts of country and chastising both animate and inanimate 

 things. 



SOME ANALOGIES AND HOMOLOGIES. 



By W. T. freeman, F. E. C. S. 



READERS nowadays like to have things made easy for them. 

 The student has worked for year after year at one new 

 subject after the other ; it has been hard work for him, he has 

 painfully struggled to master the new facts, the new ideas, and the 

 time comes when he has reached the acme of his work ; he thinks 

 more for himself, reads magazines more than books, and prefers 

 to digest the articles in his armchair, and they must be put for 

 him in an appetizing form, must reach him in fact as the old ideas 

 amplified and reclothed. Very pleasant reading the old lore 

 brought home again, very refreshing to regain what is nearly lost 

 by the help of a few chatty words in everj^-day tones; nice to 

 dream, even among the words of the scientist, and to drift into 

 illusive paths of speculation which are pointing dimly through 

 and away beyond the veil of thought. May this little paper then 

 be simply a series of dips here and there into the teachings of the 

 unity of type and ideas, leaving the workings of the deeper mines 

 for those who are fit for the labor. 



Analogues and homologues are words with a practical ring 

 about them, but they can not always be dealt with in a practical 

 manner. The analogies of the creation teach us that everything is 

 spun of the same stuff and upon one plan. Let a powerful ex- 

 ample of this fact be taken in hand at once, and some portion of the 

 animal creation be utilized. Now, we have all of us necks, some of 

 us graceful necks, some of us apoplectic necks, and some of us no 

 necks at all to speak of ; again, the giraffe has a very long neck, 

 the elephant a very short one, and the porpoise apparently stops 

 short of one altogether, but in each and every case we find seven 

 cervical vertebrae aw(^ seven only. Again, they, and human 

 beings also, all have the same number and variety of muscles and 

 ligaments. Some of them certainly are simply mere representa- 

 tives ; for instance, the powerful ligamentum nuchae of the horse 



