170 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



specific form ; thus a permanent type is evolved from 

 special appearances. 



Acosta has handed down to us another belief of 

 the comparatively civilized Peruvians, which recalls 

 the primitive genesis of their mythical ideas. He 

 s;iys that the shepherds used to adore various stars, 

 to which they assigned the names of animals ; 

 stars which protected men against the respective 

 animals after whom they were called. They held 

 the general belief that all animals whatever had a 

 representative in heaven, which watched over their 

 reproduction, and of which they were, so to speak, 

 the essence. This affords another example of the 

 more general extension and classification, and, at 

 the same time, of the reduction of the original multi- 

 tude of fetishes. 



Some of the North American Indians asserted that 

 every species of animal had an elder brother, who 

 was the origin of all the individuals of the species. 

 They said, for example, that the beaver, which was 

 the elder brother of this species of rodents, was as 

 large as one of their cabins. Others supposed that 

 all kinds of animals had their type in the world of 

 souls, a manitu, which kept guard over them. Kal- 

 ston, in his " Songs of the Russian People," tells us 

 that Buyan, the island paradise of Russian mytho- 

 logy, contains a serpent older than all others, a 

 larger raven, a finer queen bee, and so of all other 

 animals. Morgan, in his work upon the Iroquois, 



