TREE-WORSHIP 39 



doves were said to have brought from Zeus the 

 command to establish the oracle. We are 

 familiar with the wood-pigeon and its gentle 

 note ; but perhaps we have not thought of it 

 as having once been regarded as an inter- 

 mediary between gods and men. 



There were other tree-oracles in Greece, 

 and, like the other ancient religious forms and 

 customs we have been noting, such oracles ex- 

 isted in many lands. Our German ancestors 

 practised divination by means of pieces cut 

 from the branch of a fruit-tree and thrown 

 upon a white cloth ; and the Druids employed 

 similar means. The divining-rod of the water- 

 finder, cut from hazel or thornbush, reminds 

 us of the truth of the saying that we have 

 but to scratch the skin of the civilised man to 

 find the savage beneath it. 



Akin to the belief in a spirit dwelling with- 

 in the tree is the belief in the change of human 

 beings into trees ; and this has been a favourite 

 one with poet and painter. The stories of 

 such change that came down from the old 

 mythology were the subject of Ovid's Meta- 

 morphoses. Daphne, fleeing from Apollo, 

 prayed to her mother, Earth, to deliver her, 



