WORSHIP OF ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA. 99 



whence it was reported back on February 15tli with, certain help- 

 ful amendments. On February 23d it was taken up, when Sena- 

 tor Frye said : " That is a public bill of very great importance. 

 ... It is a bill recommended by the President and Secretary of 

 State, and indorsed by nearly all the boards of trade, chambers 

 of commerce, and maritime associations." The bill was then 

 passed and sent to the House of Representatives, when it was 

 referred to its Committee on Foreign Affairs. 



■♦»» 



PRIMITIVE WORSHIP OF ATMOSPHERIC PHE- 

 NOMENA. 



By the Count GOBLET D'ALVIELLA. 



ATMOSPHERICAL manifestations, or the aggregate of the 

 - phenomena whose theatre is the atmosphere, present a 

 mysterious appearance to primitive man, which, whether it seem 

 beneficent or fearful, is always of a nature vividly to impress the 

 imagination. Hence man very early regarded these phenomena 

 as individualities endowed with body and soul, or as superhuman 

 personalities, which he was afterward led to make an object of 

 worship. This is easily shown to be the fact in the case of the 

 dawn and twilight, wind, rain, clouds, whirlwinds, and water- 

 spouts, lightning and thunder, echoes, the rainbow, the aurora 

 borealis, the mirage, etc. Rain has at times been represented as 

 honey or seed which fell from the sky to fertilize the earth, as 

 in the myth of Danae ; the peoples of India have personified the 

 waters of the sky as the milkings of cows ; a step further, and 

 we have the goddess of rain. The Khonds of central India fa- 

 bled that these waters were poured upon the earth through a 

 sieve by a nymph who was called Pizou Pennou. 



The clouds have been personified under the form of serpents, 

 dragons, birds, or wolves; in the mythology of peoples who 

 suffer from drought these personifications take the shape of 

 thieves and receivers, which carry off the waters and keep them 

 captive. Such assimilations may appear strange at first sight ; 

 it is hard for us to imagine that man could have compared the 

 clouds to such objects. The philological school supposes that 

 man began by giving the clouds the names of animals whose 

 forms they most frequently affected ; but at last these appella- 

 tions lost their character, which was in its origin simply meta- 

 phorical, and thus arose the idea of assimilating the clouds to 

 the animals whose names they bore. This theory is not without 

 some foundation, but it is not in general indispensable to look to 

 changes in language. Man, especially childish, primitive man, is 



