624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



practice in insular and continental Australasia, Northern Asia, and 

 Central America. 



Curious are the forms under which many people have figured the 

 sun and moon. The simplest are the disk-forms, with or without 

 rays, which are of frequent occurrence. On a temple of Palenque, 

 while the sun has this form, the moon is represented as a shell-shaped 

 vase or a spiral shell filled with water, out of which a hare is creeping. 

 Squier found similar representations painted on the rocks in Nicara- 

 gua. In pictures ascribed to the Toltecs, the four great Mexican gods 

 are bearing the eye-dotted sky on their shoulders and arms, while the 

 sun-god and the moon-god are indicated under the symbols of the 

 tiger and the hare — a form of representation that has extensively 

 spread in North America. In the ancient Kami religion of the Jap- 

 anese, the moon was worshiped as a fox. The Caffres and the Esqui- 

 maux ascribed an independent life to these planets, the latter people 

 holding that they were human beings who had ascended to heaven, 

 and conceiving the Moon to be the younger brother of the female 

 Sun. In Peru the Moon-mother was both sister and wife of the Sun, 

 like Osiris and Isis in Egypt. In the Lithuanian folk-songs the Moon 

 takes the Sun to wife, and the Morning-Star is their daughter. The 

 red Mintiras of the Malay Peninsula regard both Sun and Moon as 

 women. In Southern Australia, among the Mbokobis in South Amer- 

 ica, and in the old Slavic sagas, the Moon is a man, and to the Kha- 

 sias of Northwestern India he is the son-in-law of the Sun. By the 

 Hurons the Moon is called the creator of the earth and grandmother 

 of the Sun ; in the myths of the Ottawas it is an old woman with a 

 pleasant white face — the sister of the Day-Star. The Chiquitos call 

 the Moon their mother, and the Navajos make it a rider on a mule. 

 Where the planets are worshiped, preference in honors is generally 

 accorded to the brighter and more conspicuous star of day. But the 

 Botocudos of Brazil give the higher place to the Moon, and derive most 

 of the phenomena of nature from it ; and in Central America and 

 Hayti are also people who hold the Moon in no less honor. Curiously, 

 these people find their counterparts among tribes of Western, South- 

 em, and Central Africa, who rejoice with dancing and feasts at each 

 appearance of the new moon, and expect an improvement of their 

 condition from its beneficent influence ; and they are not so far re- 

 moved from the superstitious women of civilized Europe and America 

 who wait for the increase of the moon to change their dwelling, to 

 cut their hair, to be married, and to baptize their children. A belief 

 existed among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, the Natchez of the 

 Mississippi, and the Appalachians of Florida, that the sun was the radi- 

 ant abode of dead chiefs and braves. To the Esquimaux of Labrador 

 belongs the honor of having discovered that the moon was the para- 

 dise for the good, while the wicked were consigned to a hole in the 

 earth ; although some of the South American Indians and the Poly- 



