626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to one of the Namaqua legends, the hare has scratched the moon, 

 and the marks remain, but the animal itself has broken away, and is 

 now continually fleeing before the planet. Who, in the face of such 

 stories, can be oblivious of the general connection between the moon 

 and the hunting goddess, and its personification in identity with her, 

 which figure in the fables of classical antiquity ? 



A most remarkable fact is the agreement of peoples who have 

 never had anything to do with one another — of South African tribes 

 and the Northern Europeans, the Samoa-Islanders and the ancient 

 Peruvians — in the belief that the spots in the moon represent a creat- 

 ure of our own species. The story of the man in the moon, which 

 may be traced in Europe for some hundred years back, and appears in 

 the old Norse myths, and which still charms our children, prevails in 

 many different versions. The Raratongans recognize in it a departed 

 chief ; the Ossetes of the Caucasus, a demon, which they regard with 

 an idolatrous fear ; the Naraaquas, a higher being, to whom they at- 

 tach great importance ; the Pottawattamie Indians, an old woman ; the 

 people of Timor, a spinster ; the Mangaians, a busy housewife ; and 

 the ancient Peruvians, a courtesan. The Siamese see in it, now a hare, 

 and now a married couple, who cultivate the fields and accumulate 

 heaps of rice. 



There remain to be considered the impressions that eclipses of the 

 sun and moon make upon primitive peoples. A large number of their 

 explanations represent the planets as a man and a woman, and some- 

 times bring in a child to help in producing the phenomena. The 

 Jesuit Le Jeune was told by an Algonquin, in Canada, that the Sun 

 and Moon were man and wife who had a child. When the father took 

 up the little one to caress it, there was an eclipse of the sun ; when the 

 mother held it in her arms, an eclipse of the moon. According to the 

 Mintiras of Malacca, the Sun and Moon are two women, of whom the 

 former eats her children, while the Moon hides hers, although she is 

 pledged to eat them too. Enraged at this breach of faith, the Sun 

 chases the Moon around, swallowing her own star at each dawn, while 

 the Moon brings hers out as soon as her pursuer is far enough away. 

 At times, the enemies approach so nearly that the Sun can strike the 

 Moon, and then there is an eclipse. The Hos of India have the same 

 story, with the variation that the Moon, in punishment, is cut in two 

 by the Sun, and has to grow together again. Notwithstanding the' 

 frequent recurrence of eclipses, with nothing particularly bad happen- 

 ing after them, most primitive peoples aasociate with them an omen 

 of some great danger to the earth or the moon. The Greenlanders 

 have a personal apprehension in the matter, and believe that the Moon 

 rummages their houses for skins or victuals, and destroys those per- 

 sons who have not observed due sobriety. The South American Chi- 

 quitos try to help the darkened star against a dog that has worried it 

 till its light has been colored red, and extinguished by its streaming 



