Myths 

 Nation 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



478 



to pass in its onward march as it may well 

 be it will come to pass that other super- 

 stitions shall be dethroned as the sun-god 

 has been dethroned, we may rest assured 

 that this also will be a step in human prog- 

 ress and in the beneficent evolution of the 

 Power which ruleth alike the courses of the 

 stars and the ways of men. MAUDSLEY 

 Body and Mind, lect. 3, p. 96. (A., 1898.) 



2345. MYTHS, MODERN, MATCH- 

 ING ANCIENT The Odyssey Finds Parallel 

 in New Zealand. The Tahitians tell tales 

 of their sea - god Hiro, whose followers 

 were sailing on the ocean while he was 

 lulled to sleep in a cavern in the depths 

 below; then the wind-god raised a furious 

 storm to destroy the canoe, but the sailors 

 cried to Hiro, till, rising to the surface, he 

 quelled the storm, and his votaries came safe 

 to port. So in Homer, Poseidon the sea-god, 

 dweller in caves of ocean, sets on the winds 

 to toss the frail bark of Odysseus among the 

 thundering waves, till Ino comes to his 

 rescue and bids him strip and swim for the 

 Phaiakian shore. Both tales are word-pic- 

 tures of the stormy sea told in the language 

 of nature-myths, only with different turns. 

 The New Zealanders have a story of Maui 

 imprisoning the winds, all but the wild west 

 wind, whom he cannot catch to shut into its 

 cavern by a great stone rolled against its 

 mouth; all he can do is to chase it home 

 sometimes, and then it hides in the cavern 

 and for a while dies away. All this ie a 

 mythic description of the weather, meaning 

 that other winds are occasional, but the west 

 wind prevalent and strong. These New Zea- 

 landers had never heard of the classic myth 

 of .ZEolus and the cave of the winds, yet 

 how nearly they had come to the same 

 mythic fancy, that it is from such blow- 

 holes in the hillsides that the winds come 

 forth. TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 15, p. 392. 

 (A., 1899.) 



2346. MYTHS OF ZOOLOGY Hair- 

 worms Toads in Rock Barnacle Geese 

 Popular Credulity Unlimited. When the 

 country swain, loitering along some lane, 

 comes to a standstill to contemplate, with 

 awe and wonder, the spectacle of a mass of 

 the familiar " hair-eels " or " hairworms " 

 wriggling about in a pool, he plods on his 

 way firmly convinced that, as he has been 

 taught to believe, he has just witnessed the 

 results of the transformation of some 

 horse's hairs into living creatures. So fa- 

 miliar is this belief to people of professedly 

 higher culture than the countryman, that 

 the transformation just alluded to has to 

 all, save a few thinking persons and zoolo- 

 gists, become a matter of the most common- 

 place kind. When some quarrymen, engaged 

 in splitting up the rocks, have succeeded in 

 dislodging some huge mass of stone, there 

 may sometimes be seen to hop from among 

 the de"bris a lively toad or frog, which comes 

 to be regarded by the excavators with feel- 

 ings akin to those of superstitious wonder 



and amazement. The animal may or may 

 not be captured; but the fact is duly 

 chronicled in the local newspapers, and peo- 

 ple wonder for a season over the phenom- 

 enon of a veritable Rip Van Winkle of a 

 frog, which, to all appearance, has lived for 

 " thousands of years in the solid rock." Nor 

 do the hairworm and the frog stand alone 

 in respect of their marvelous origin. Popu- 

 lar zoology is full of such marvels. We find 

 unicorns, mermaids, and mermen; geese de- 

 veloped from the shell-fish known as "bar- 

 nacles " ; we are told that crocodiles may 

 weep, and that sirens can sing in short, 

 there is nothing so wonderful to be told of 

 animals that people will not believe the tale. 

 ANDREW WILSON Facts and Fictions of 

 Zoology, p. 1. (Hum., 1882.) 



2347. 



Ludicrous Fiction- 



about the Skunk. In that not always trust- 

 worthy book, " The Natural History of 

 Chili," Molina tells us how they deal with 

 the animal in the transandine regions. 

 " When one appears," he says, " some of the 

 company begin by caressing it, until an op- 

 portunity offers for one of them to seize it 

 by the tail. In this position the muscle* 

 become contracted, the animal is unable to 

 eject its fluid, and is quickly despatched." 

 One might just as well talk of caressing a 

 cobra de capello; yet this laughable fiction 

 finds believers all over South and North 

 America. Professor Baird gravely intro- 

 duces it into his great work on the mam- 

 malia. . . . The Indians are grave jo- 

 kers, they seldom smile; and this old tra- 

 ditional skunk-joke, which has run the 

 length of a continent, finding its way into- 

 many wise books, is their revenge on a su- 

 perior race. HUDSON Naturalist in La- 

 Plata, ch. 6, p. 118. (C. & H., 1895.) 



2348. 



Romantic Tales of 



the Gorilla Inventions to Amuse Children. - 

 Mr. Ford discredits the house-building and 

 elephant-driving stories [viz.: that the go- 

 rillas build houses to live in, and that bands, 

 of them unite, arm themselves with clubs, 

 and drive elephants through the forest], and 

 says that no well-informed natives believe 

 them. They are tales told to children. 

 HUXLEY Man's Place in Nature, p. 212. 

 (Hum.) 



2349. 



South- American 



Legend of a Tree-creeper's Nest. One 

 species, Erythrothorax, in Yucatan, makes 

 so large a nest of sticks, that the natives do 

 not believe that so small a bird can be the 

 builder. They say that when the tzapatan 

 begins to sing, all the birds in the forest re- 

 pair to it, each one carrying a stick to add 

 to the structure; only one, a tyrant-bird, 

 brings two sticks, one for itself and one for 

 the urubu or vulture, that bird being con- 

 sidered too large, heavy, and ignorant of 

 architecture to assist personally in the 

 work. HUDSON Naturalist in La Plata, ch. 

 18, p. 245. (C. & H., 1895.) 



