126 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



unconsciously retains the old custom. Thus we call 

 weather good and bad, the wind niad (pazzo] or furious, 

 the sea treacherous, the waters insidious ; a stone is 

 obstinate, if we cannot easily move it, and we inveigh 

 against all kinds of material obstacles as if they could 

 hear us. We call the season inconstant or deceitful, 

 the sun melancholy and unwilling to shine, and we 

 say that the sky threatens snow. We say that some 

 plants are consumed by heat, that some soils are 

 indomitable, that well cultivated ground is no longer 

 wild, that in a good season the whole landscape 

 smiles and leaps for joy. A river is called malevolent, 

 and a lake swallows up men ; the earth is thirsty 

 and sucks up moisture, and plants fear the cold. 

 The people of Pistoja say that some olive trees will 

 not feel a thrashing, that they are afraid of many 

 things, and that they live on, despising the course 

 of years. Again, they say that olive trees are not 

 afraid of the pruning knife, and that they rejoice in 

 its use by a skilled hand. Thousands of such ex- 

 pressions might be adduced, and we refer our readers 

 to Giuliani's work, " Linguaggio civente toscano" 



Nor do we only ascribe our own feelings to inani- 

 mate things, but we also invest them, with the forms 

 and members of the human body. We speak of the 

 head, shoulder, back, or foot of a mountain, of an 

 arm of the sea, a tongue of land, the mouth of a 

 sea-port, of a cave, or crater. So again we ascribe 

 teeth to mountains, a front (fronte, forehead) to a 



