358 GEOGEAPUICAL DISTKIBUTION OF MYTHS. 



tlie floods are out the fish leave the river to feed upon certain 

 fruits : as soon as they hear or feel the fruit strike the water, 

 they leap to catch it as it rises to the surface, and in their eager- 

 ness spring into the air. From this habit the Ounce has learnt 

 a curious stratagem ; he gets upon a projecting bough, and 

 from time to time strikes the water with his tail, thus imitating 

 the sound which the fruit makes as it drops, and as the fish 

 spring towards it, he catches them with his paw."^ More 

 recently, the story has been told again by Mr. Wallace ; " The 

 jaguar, say the Indians, is the most cunning animal in the 

 forest : he can imitate the voice of almost every bird and ani- 

 mal so exactly, as to draw them towards him : he fishes in the 

 rivers, lashing the water with his tail to imitate falling fruit, 

 and when the fish approach, hooks them up with his claws.^'^ 

 It may be objected against the use of the tail-fishing story 

 as mythological evidence, that there may possibly be some 

 foundation for it in actual fact ; and it is indeed hardly more 

 astonishing, for instance, than the jaguar's turning a number 

 of river-turtles on their backs to be eaten at his leisure, a 

 story which Humboldt accepts as true. But the way in which 

 the tail-fishingr is attributed in different countries to one ani- 

 mal after another, the bear, the wolf, the hyfena, the jackal, the 

 racoon, the monkey, and the jaguar, authorizes the opinion 

 that, in most cases at least, it is one of those floating ideas 

 which are taken up as part of the story-teller's stock in trade, 

 and used where it suits him, but with no particular subordina- 

 tion to fact. ■ 



Lastly, another Old World story which has a remarkable 

 analogue in South America is that of the Diable Boiteus. 

 This, however, in the state in which it is known to modern 

 Europe, is a conception a good deal modified under Christian 

 influences. In the old mythology of our race, it is the Fire- 

 god who is lame. The unsteady flickering of the flames may 

 perhaps be figured in the crooked legs and hobbling gait of 

 HephEestus, and Zeus casts him down from heaven to earth 

 like his crooked lightnings ; while the stories which correspond 

 with the Vulcan-myth on German ground tell of the laming of 

 ' Southey, vol. i. p. 142. ' Wallace, p. 455. 



