260 FOSSIL MEN. 



all of them outgrowths of the yearnings of the human 

 mind for a great deliverer from all the evils which 

 beset humanity, yearnings which belong to the higher 

 spiritual instincts of our nature, and which for the 

 Christian are satisfied in the person and work of Jesus 

 the Christ. 



I have mentioned above the Iroquois legend of the 

 Great Hare, which forms another, if less intelligible, 

 connection of the religions and superstitions of the 

 East and of the West. This idea prevailed through- 

 out North America, from Mexico to the shores of the 

 Arctic Sea. As held by some Algonquin tribes it 

 represented Manibozoo, the Great Hare, as moving on 

 the waters, and making the earth out of a grain of 

 sand from the bottom of the sea, and man out of the 

 dead bodies of animals which had preceded him. The 

 Great Hare is thus the creator, and also embraces some 

 attributes of the Divine Spirit as introduced in the 

 Scriptures. We can only conjecture the origin of this 

 use of the hare as an emblem of God. It may have 

 arisen from the harmless, simple, noiseless, and spectre- 

 like habits of the creature, or from its expressive face 

 and eyes, or from its habit of erecting itself on its 

 feet, and its antics at certain seasons, or, as some 

 think, from its whiteness in winter. But whatever its 

 origin, it goes back into remote antiquity, and is of 

 very wide distribution. One effect of it is the aversion 

 to eat the flesh of the animal, which still lingers as a 

 sort of superstition in some parts of Europe, and which 

 I have noticed even in European settlers in America. 



