THE BASIS OF ANIMAL MYTH 305 



seem a priori impossible. The story of the pygmy 

 race in Africa, and of the pygmies fighting the 

 cranes (Bush-men and ostriches), is always quoted 

 to his credit. But the detailed story of the ants 

 4 larger than dogs, but smaller than foxes/ which 

 made ant-hills of gold dust, has yet found no 

 rational or probable solution in the facts of natural 

 history. Yet there is no reason to think that the 

 ancients looked on the story of the ' golden ants ' 

 as at all more improbable than that of the pygmies. 

 On the contrary, there is evidence that they thought 

 the latter a very childish tale. Perhaps they were 

 right in not rejecting the first. The Brazilian 

 beetles recently shown at the Zoo were so exactly 

 like gold buttons that they were daily mistaken for 

 the ' real article/ and the keeper's attention was 

 drawn to the fact that there were some buttons 

 under the glass case. * Golden beetles ' are less 

 probable than gold-hoarding ants, and in Little 

 Thibet the gold found after storms is still called 

 ' ant-gold/ from a belief that the insects remove 

 the earth from above it. Modern incredulity for a 

 time refused to believe in Bruce's discovery, of the 

 tsetse-fly, though it was carefully described and 

 pictured in his account of his African travels. The 

 story of a fly ' which kills horses but cannot hurt 

 donkeys/ was so exactly in the style of Herodotus 



u 



