320 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



Juke 1, 1883, 



from his specimens. The student of natural history will linger 

 with dcligiit over Mr. Bolton's microscopes, and see there 

 not only the embryonic stages of many fishes and molluscs, 

 but the minuter particles, living and dead, which sustain 

 the growing young and adult individuals. The proteus 

 animalcule {Am<i/,ii) may be watched creeping over the 

 sides of his zoophyte troughs and live boxes, whilst in 

 another receptacle a few unfortunate young trout may be 

 seen in a state of uneasy excitement, occasioned by rela- 

 tively huii;(' parasites, or lish-lice [Argulus foliaceus), which 

 infest them ; one of these placed under the microscope 

 reveals its formidable suckers and hooklets, whereby it 

 attaches itself to its victim ; it belongs to the group of 

 animals which includes the crab and lobster {Crustacea). 

 Nor is Mr. Bolton's department devoid of local interest ; 

 with the ardent zeal of a lover of natural history, he has 

 been scraping and gathering from the pond beneath the 

 memorial to the Prince Consort in the exhibition grounds, 

 which are now stocked with fresh-water fish, and has 

 brought to light myriads of organisms calculated to agree 

 and disagree with the appetites of the imprisoned captives. 

 Mr. Bolton's exhibit closes the living portion of the 

 exhibition, and dead life now becomes the dominant feature 

 of its galleries. A remarkably largo walrus flanks one side 

 of the short staircase which leads to the west quadrant ; it 

 is a pity that tliis magnificent specimen has not been suit- 

 ably cased in glass ; nevertheless it is worthy of attention, 

 and an interesting printed circular, relating to the habits 

 of the walrus, and its geographical distribution, may be 

 obtained from the exhibitor. 



The west quadrant, the northern gallery, and the east 

 quadrant are devoted to stufl'ed specimens of fish, fish- 

 eating birds, etc. Amongst the more noteworthy of these 

 are the collection of plaster casts, by the late Mr. Buck- 

 land, the stuflfed specimens of exceptionally-large and well- 

 marked forms, which testify to the skill of the angler, and 

 remind the student that, apart from economy and study, 

 fish and fishing have afTorded him the pleasurable and 

 healthy beguilement of many happy hours with rod and 

 line, over moorland and heath to wild lakes and rivers, or 

 of the cool, bracing early morning in a fisher's smack far 

 out at sea. The Fisheries Exhibition, then, admirably 

 fulfils the two factors which we started with ; it displays 

 the results of economy combined with those of recreation. 



The natural-history galleries are so complete that a 

 hurried sketch here would tend but to confuse rather than 

 enlighten the reader ; we hope to visit them again, and to 

 show him phases in the development of the salmon, collec- 

 tions of parasites which prey upon all kinds of fish, beauti- 

 ful specimens of algw, and exquisite accurate drawings of 

 annelids ; to comment upon them, and to learn the lessons 

 they are intended to teach. 



(To he continued.') 



THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH. 



VIII. 

 By Edward Clodd. 



THE beliefs of the ancient Finns in the world as a 

 divided egg, of which the white is the ocean, the yolk 

 the earth, and tlie arched shell the sky, and of the Poly- 

 nesians that the universe is the hollow of avast cocoa-nut 

 shell, at the tapering bottom of which is the root of all 

 things, are to us so grotesque that it is not easy to regard 

 them as explanations seriously invented by the human 

 mind. Yet these, together with the notions of the two 



halves of the shell of Brahma's egg, and of the two cala- 

 Viashes which form the heaven and the earth in African 

 myth, find their correspondences in the widespread con- 

 ception of the overarching firmament as a hard and solid 

 thing,* with holes (or windows t) to let the rain through, 

 with gates through which angels descend, % or through 

 which prophets peer into c(^lestial mysteries ; § a firmament 

 outside which other people live, as instanced by the Poly- 

 nesian term for strangers, " papalangi," or " heaven- 

 bursters." 



They are the less refined forms of myths which have 

 held their ground from pre-scientific times till now, and the 

 rude analogies of which are justified by the appearances of 

 things as presented by the senses. Man's intellectual 

 history is the history of his escape from the illusions of the 

 senses, it is the slow and often reluctant discovery that 

 nature is quite other than that which it seems to be. And 

 this variance between appearances and realities remained 

 hidden until the intellect challenged the report about 

 phenomena which the sense-perceptions brought. For in 

 the ages when feeling was dominant, and the judgment 

 scarce awakened, the simple explanations in venerable 

 legends sung by bard or told by aged crone — legends to 

 which age had given sanctity which finally placed them 

 among the world's sacred literatures — were received 

 without doubt or question. But, as belief in causality 

 spread, men were not content to rest in the naive explana- 

 tions of an uncritical age. What man had guessed about 

 nature gave place to what nature had to say about herself, 

 and with the classifying of experience science had its 

 birth. 



Meanwhile, until this quite recent stage in man's pro- 

 gress was reached, the senses told their blundering tale of 

 an earth flat and fixed, with sun, moon, and stars as its 

 ministering servants, while gods or beasts upbore it, and 

 mighty pillars supported the massive firmament. In 

 Hindoo myth the tortoise which upholds the earth rests 

 upon an elephant, whose legs reach all the iray doirn ! In 

 Bogota the culture-god Bochica punishes a lesser and 

 oflending deity by compelling him to sustain the part of 

 Atlas, and it is in shifting his burden from shoulder to 

 shoulder that earthquakes are caused. The natives of 

 Celebes say that they are due to the world-supporting Hog 

 as he rubs himself against a tree ; the Thascaltecs that they 

 occur when the deities who hold up the world relieve one 

 another ; the Japanese think that they are caused by huge 

 whales creeping underground, an idea probably confirmed 

 by the discovery of monster fossil bones. 



As the myths about earth-bearers prevail in the regions 

 of earthquakes, so do those about subterranean beings in 

 the neighbourhood of volcanoes. The superstitions which 

 mountainous countries especially foster are intensified 

 when the mountains themselves cast forth their awful and 

 devastating progeny, " red ruin " and the other children 

 born of them. Man in his dread, " caring in no wise 

 for the external world, except as it influenced his 

 own destiny ; honouring the lightning because it could 

 strike him, the sea because it could drown him,"|| could do 

 naught else than people them with maleficent beings, and 

 conceive of their sulphur exhaling mouths as the jaws of a 

 bottomless pit. 



Indeed, if in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the 

 "solar" theory we shackled ourselves with some other, we 



* " And said the f?ods, let there be a hammered ])late in the midst 

 of the waters, and let it be dividing between waters and waters.** 

 Gen. i, 6. The verb from which the substantive is derived signifies, 

 among other meanings, " to beat out into thin plates." 



t Gen. viii. 2. J Gen. sxviii. 17. § Ezekiel i. 1. 



II " Modern Painters," Vol. III., 15-1. 



