238 



DISCOVERY 



in Maya chronology as the basis of a time- count for 

 the Calendar. He is also the fire-maker, who kindles 

 the new flame with the fire-drill on the recurrence 

 of the time- cycle. 



The Maya's Mammon 



In God M Me have an even duskier deity, a patron 

 of the native porters or coolies, and, like them, well- 

 nigh black through constant exposure to the tropical 

 sun. He has, in fact, an appearance almost negroid, 

 thick, red lips, the lower drooping pendulously. He 

 bears on his head a bale of merchandise secured by 

 thick ropes. Occasionally he is drawn with the 

 skeleton-like frame of the death-god, and this, and the 

 circumstance that he usually carries arms, incline 

 me to the belief that he is symbolical of the great risks 

 run by the itinerant merchants of Mexico and Yucatan, 

 who frequently acted as spies upon neighbouring tribes, 

 or as the advance -guard of an invading army. He is, 

 indeed, the god Ek ahau, or Ek chuah, " The Black 

 Lord," a cruel and rapacious deity, whose general 

 character reflects none too amiably upon the methods 

 of Maj^a commercial activity. 



God N, another aged divinity, is the god of the 

 end of the year, and his headdress contains the sign 

 for the year of 360 days. O is the only other goddess 

 of the group, and her picture does not appear elsewhere 

 than in the Madrid Code.x. She also is depicted as 

 advanced in years, and is usually represented as 

 sitting at a loom. P, the last of the series, is easily 

 to be recognised as the Maya frog-god, whose head- 

 dress, like that of God N, contains the sign for the 

 year. 



It is then possible to identify with reasonable like- 

 lihood six out of these sixteen figures, to label them 

 with the traditional names they bore, and to fix the 

 nature and characteristics of at least twice that 

 number. This is certainty an advance, but it is not to 

 say that we know all that is to be known regarding 

 this galaxy of gods. The sources from which our 

 information is drawn are tantalisingly obscure, but I 

 would indicate two which I think have so far been 

 insufficiently utilised. The monuments of Guatemala, 

 Chiapas, and Yucatan contain numerous representations 

 of deities, and these have as yet received only the most 

 perfunctory attention. They must be more inten- 

 sively examined and identified with, or differentiated 

 from, the forms of the manuscripts. True, Maya art 

 and its problems, and the elucidation of the hiero- 

 glyphic system, the surveying of temple sites, and the 

 simplification of the calendar have occupied students 

 more intimately. The other source to which they 

 should turn is the folk-lore of the tribes of modern 

 Yucatan, as recorded in such well-informed works as 



Professor Tozzer's Comparative Study of the Maya and 

 Lancadohe Indians. 



REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING 

 P. Schellhas, Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts. 

 (Papers of the Peabody Museum, vol. iv, No. i.) 



D. Brinton, A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphs. (Publications of 



the University of Pennsylvania, vol. iii. No. 2.) 

 II. B. Alexander, Latin- American Mythology. (Boston, 1920.) 



E. Seler, Gesammette Abhandlungen zur Amerikanischen sprach 



ttnd Altertumskunde , 5 vols. (Berlin, 1902-15.) 

 L. Spence, Myths of Mexico and Peru, 191 3. 

 L. Spence, The Cods of Mexico, 1923. (For Mexican variations 



of these gods.) 



Sleep and Sleeplessness 



By D. Fraser Harris, M.D., D.Sc. 



Professor o/ Physiology in Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S. 



What is Sleep ? 



Because a thing is very familiar it by no means 

 follows that we know how it comes about. Possibly 

 nothing in life is more familar than falling asleep, 

 yet comparatively few people could tell us exactly 

 what it is that makes people sleepy and finally permits 

 the onset of sleep. 



The fact is that healthy sleep is the result of the 

 co-operation of several conditions or factors as physi- 

 ologists call them. The most obvious thing about 

 sleep is that, while it lasts, we are unconscious, dream- 

 ing being a more or less distinct interruption of this 

 unconsciousness. On its mental or psychical side, then, 

 sleep is a regularly recurring state of unconsciousness, 

 lasting, on an average, about six to eight hours out 

 of the twenty- four. 



But this unconsciousness is the correlative of a 

 condition of rest — inactivity — of the brain, of its 

 most highly organised portion, known as the cortex 

 cerebri. This cortex cerebri is the physical basis of 

 consciousness, and therefore, when the cortex is 

 active, consciousness is present, when it is inactive 

 below a certain limit, there is unconsciousness. 



The Rhythm of Sleep 



This partial inactivity, like the unconsciousness it 

 involves, recurs regularly, and, as physiologists say, 

 rhythmicahy, i.e. at regular intervals. The rhythm 

 of sleep is somehow related to the great cosmic rhythm 

 of night and daj', for towards nightfall animals and 

 birds withdraw into the dark and rest, the only excep- 

 tions being those creatures of nocturnal habits — lions, 

 jackals, owls, to name no others. A curious instance 

 of this rhythm in regard to sleep is seen in the case 



