4 NATURAL HISTORY. 



extraordinarily wide diffusion of early beliefs as to the 

 mystical characters of certain animals is further attested 

 by the known facts as to the system of ' totemism ' among 

 primitive races, or by the almost universal traces which 

 are met with of the strange 'cult' known as 'serpent- 

 worship.' 



Another and a most important source of zoological 

 knowledge is that arising from the friendly relations which 

 almost all primitive peoples seem to have established 

 with particular kinds of animals. In many cases indeed 

 in most such friendly relations seem to have been formed 

 in times long anterior to written history. Philology, 

 moreover, teaches us that among particular groups of 

 nations as, for example, among all the main stems which 

 have diverged from the great Aryan stock the names 

 of particular domestic animals are based upon some 

 common root. We thus are furnished with decisive evi- 

 dence that the animals so designated were known to the 

 Aryans prior to the commencement of their dispersal. 

 Thus, almost all our most valuable domestic animals, 

 such as the ox, the sheep, the pig, the horse, and the 

 dog, are designated in Sanscrit, Latin, Greek, Gothic, 

 and often in German, English, and other allied languages, 

 by names which can be shown to have originated in the 

 same root-form. 



