can find in myths so direct a bond of union as this between the phenomenon to be explained and the ideas of causality presented by the explanation; and the impossibility of finding such a bond of union in the majority of cases has led to the most extravagant and improbable systems of myth-analysis at the hands of modern scholars. To me it appears that the safest view for us to adopt is, that the process of myth-formation, although probably always starting from an instinctive desire to explain the causal reasons of observed phenomena, has been a multifarious proc ess, wherein real history of ancestors, allegory, metaphor, and even the most gratuitous imagination, may occur in various measures of indiscriminate quantity. Under these circumstances, and so far as our present subject is concerned, I think it is best to accept the facts of mythology as we find them, without attempting to explain the precise psychological processes which have been concerned in their production.

If, then, we take a general survey of mythological organisms, the first thing that strikes us with reference to them is the fact that they are all compounds of organisms already known to exist. Profuse as the imagination of uncultured man has shown itself to be in the way of creating novel forms of animal life, it never seems to have been able to invent such a form which was in all its parts novel. On the contrary, the animal morphology of myth for the most part consists in joining together in one organism the parts which are distinctive of different organisms - the body of a man to that of a horse, the body of a woman to that of a fish, the legs of a goat to that of a boy, the wings of a bird to the shoulders of a bull, and so on. Very often, indeed, the organs thus separated from their legitimate owners underwent sundry modifications in detail before they were re-mounted in their new positions; and when such modifications were considerable, and still more when a number of different organisms were laid under tribute to the manufacture of a new one, the resulting monster might well claim to exhibit a highly creditable degree of inventive faculty on the part of his creators. Nevertheless, as I have said, this inventive faculty never rose above the comparatively childish level of first pulling animals to pieces, and then reconstructing them

piecemeal, although in some few cases the imaginative faculty went so far as to incorporate with the parts of living animals structures of human contrivance, as in the wheeled creatures described by the prophet Ezekiel.

Concurrently with, or following closely upon, the formation of myth, we everywhere find the formation of fable; and in the latter process, as in the former, animals play a highly conspicuous part. At any of the higher levels of culture fabulous animals are well known to be but imaginary animals; so that even our children habitually draw a distinction between the real animals of nature and what they call the "pretend animals" of fable. Nevertheless, it is only because children are told to draw this distinction that they ever so much as think of drawing it. To the native or unassisted intelligence of a child, any one kind of animal is quite as probable as any other kind- and this not only with reference to form and size, but also with reference to habits and endowments. A dragon breathing fire and smoke seems no more intrinsically improbable than a serpent with poison in its mouth; nor is it more unlikely that a mouse should turn into a horse than that a tadpole should turn into a frog. Now the mind of semicultured man is in just the same case. Of late years a great deal of investigation has been expended upon the origin of our nursery stories, and the result has been to show that these stories are spread over all quarters of the globe-sometimes just as they are told to our own children, but more usually with a certain amount of variation, which is enough to render it doubtful whether they all migrated from a single source or were independent inventions in different localities. But in all cases the probability appears to be that when first promulgated they were accepted, not as romances, but as true histories; and that they continued to be so accepted until advancing civilization slowly undermined their credibility. Gradually, therefore, they followed the fate of mythspassing from the region of history to that of poetry, and thus following a general law of mental evolution, namely, that beliefs which are matters of serious earnest in one stage of culture, in succeeding stages survive only as matters of amusement, or, at most, of aesthetic feeling. And such is now the position which is

occupied among ourselves by the whole elaborate and multifarious natural history of myth and fable. When we look at the unicorn displaying his poetic morphology upon our royal insignia, the double-headed eagle of Germany, or any of the other monstrosities which now serve as national emblems, we may see in them the last survivals of the first attempts which were made by mankind to construct a philosophy of natural history.

When we turn to the special exhibition in the Bible of primitive ideas connected with plants and animals, and look to the authors of the Pentateuch, the Book of Job, or the supposed writings of Solomon, our attention as naturalists investigating their ideas upon natural history is arrested by the accuracy of their observations. We find, indeed, that the Mosaic writer has fallen into the error of classifying the hare as a ruminant, a bat as a bird, possibly a whale as a fish, and including under one category the most diverse natural groups as "creeping things." But all these errors arise merely from an absence of morphological knowledge, which clearly could not have been attainable at that time. Barring this necessary ignorance, however, it appears to me that these early biblical writers have displayed a really wonderful degree of accuracy in their observations of plants and animals--wonderful, I mean, if contrasted with similar observations by men of other races at a comparable level of culture. If we except certain passages in the Book of Job, which appear to assume the real existence of fabulous animals-although even here the charge of inaccuracy is not admissible, from its being impossible to determine whether the allusions are intended to be taken literally or poetically-there is no other instance where the animals either of fable or of myth are countenanced. On the other hand, remarkable accuracy is displayed by the early biblical writers in their observations of external morphology, as well as of the habits and instincts of animals. In that curious and elaborate enumeration of animals as clean and unclean with which we meet in the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, it is an accurate idea of morphological classification which leads the writer to fix upon the parted hoof and chewing of the cud as features of what we should now term taxonomic importance; and when, later on, we find the whole

animal kingdom classified with reference to merely external form, number of limbs, and modes of progression, we must not neglect to notice the systematic observation which is displayed, and which, so far as it goes, is wonderfully true to nature. There is no imagery of any kind mixed up with the facts; the classification is throughout dictated by the true spirit of science; and it cannot be said to have been subsequently improved upon until the foundations of biology were laid by the commanding genius of Aristotle.

Again, as regards the habits and instincts of animals, we read in Proverbs vi. 6-8, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise; which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest." Owing to the authority of Huber, the statement here made that ants display an instinct of harvesting was regarded by latter-day naturalists as mythical. More recent observtions, however, have fully vindicated the accuracy of the older naturalist, and this without impugning that of Huber. The discrepancy between the two is owing merely to their having observed the habist of ants in different geographical areas. The species of ants observed by the biblical writer in Palestine have now been found to collect grain in the summer-time, and to store it in granaries for winter consumption; while the species observed in Europe by Huber present no such instinct. But ants with harvesting instincts have now also been found in the South of Europe, in India, and in America. Seeing then that here, as elsewhere, Solomon has proved himself to have been an accurate observer, it is much to be regretted that his disquisitions on natural history, of which we read in the Book of Kings, should all have been lost. Had these been still extant, they would have presented a high degree of historical interest as the utterances of the most ancient of professed naturalists. For, "he spoke of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth which had heard of his wisdom."

Again, whatever may be its date, how

interesting is the natural history of Job, which, notwithstanding the writer's unrestricted flights of poetry, is, as already remarked, almost always true to fact, save where the statements are plainly hyperbolical. What, for instance, can be more graphic than the description of the ostrich : What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider'? Or what can be more accurate than the description of this bird's peculiar instincts of incubation: "She leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened against her young ones as though they were not hers" This peculiarity of instinct on the part of the ostrich is likewise alluded to in the Book of Lamentations, where the writer contrasts it with the maternal instincts of other animals, and this in a passage which seems to indicate that the writer was aware of the mammalian character, if not of Cetacea, at all events of Seals; for he says: "Even the sea monsters draw out the breast: they give suck to their young ones.

But I must now draw to a close these few and imperfect remarks on the natural history of the Bible, and I will do so by briefly considering that portion of this natural history which, during the last fifty years, has excited more interest and more controversy than any passage of similar length in the whole literature of the world. I mean, of course, the first chapter of Genesis.

The great battle between the theologians and men of science began in the field of astronomy. Then it passed to the field of geology, and it was not until the antiquity of the globe, the reality of fossils, and all the other positions had been finally taken by the geologists, that the battle was resumed with renewed fury against the biologists. Here the points in dispute cannot yet be said to have been finally settled, if by a settlement we mean a general acquiescence by theologians in the doctrine of naturalists. The principal fight has been around the question of evolution as against special creation. But, besides this principal fight, there has been a kind of subordinate fight over the order of succession of vegetable and animal life upon the globe. Now, here the question is a simple question of fact, and ought not

Now, it is evident that we here have a general correspondence, but it is no less evident that the correspondence is only general, or that it fails in most points of detail. In the first place, while the biblical record appears to represent each group of living things as having been formed in its entirety before the appearance of the next group, the scientific record shows that no one group was ever thus completed before the appearance of succeeding groups. In the case of every group, the process of species-formation was concurrent with that of some of the other groups. Therefore, in the record of geology, I have prefaced each of the groups with the word "certain," in order to indicate that, at the period represented, only a very small fractional number of the forms comprised within that group had at that time made their appearance.

Thus, for example, we find that in the biblical record all the forms of vegetable

life are represented as having been in existence before any of the forms of animal life. At least it appears to me that this is the only meaning we can properly ascribe to the term grass, herbs, and trees. But, if so, of course this statement of Genesis is very far wide of the truth. Similarly it is represented that all aquatic animals appeared before any terrestrial animals. Now, although it is probably true that animal life upon this globe began in the water, it is certainly not true that all the forms of aquatic animals had made their appearance before any of the forms of terrestrial. On the On the contrary, it was only a small proportional part of the former which had been evolved before some of them became adapted to live upon dry land. Moreover, the Genesis account expressly includes under the category of aquatic animals, "every creature that moveth" in the waters, up even to great whales." It thus becomes impossible to limit the class aquatic animals to aquatic invertebrata and fish. And, even if this could be done, the difficulty would still remain, that terrestrial invertebrata are represented (under the name of "creeping things") as appearing long subsequently to aquatic invertebrata, seeing that they are said to have appeared subsequently to birds, and even to cattle. For we find that birds, and even cattle, are said to have appeared before" creeping things," which we can only understand to mean insects, snails, amphibia, reptiles, etc., as these are classed together in Leviticus under the same term. Lastly, it follows from these discrepancies that matters are in no way mended by supposing the record of Genesis to mean what it does not say, or to indicate only the

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earliest appearance of any representatives" of the sundry classes named. This, I think, is enough to show how misguided are the attempts of so-called reconcilers," who endeavor to force upon the account given in Genesis the results of modern investigation. These reconcilers always proceed in the same way. They first magnify the points of agreement, and next endeavor by sundry artifices of rhetoric to cover up the points of disagreement; then they represent that, on the whole, the agreement is so remarkable that it can only be explained by the hypothesis of inspiration. Now it is no business of mine either to impugn or to vindicate the hypothesis of inspiration; but I may observe that those who have the interests of this hypothesis at heart are only displaying their own shortsightedness by seeking to befriend it in any such way as this. Even if the coincidence between Genesis and geology had been very much more close than it is, surely it would have been a somewhat slender thread of argument on which to hang so important a doctrine. But, as the matter stands, there is nothing in the cosmology of Genesis which we might not have expected to meet with in the early philosophy of natural history. The idea pervading the alleged order of succession appears to me a sufficiently obvious, and, when properly considered, a very interesting idea. It is the idea of a progressive advance from the less to the more highly organized; and I doubt not that, if the writer had known more about the internal anatomy of the animal kingdom, his record would have been in very much closer agreement with that of modern science than we have seen it to be.-Nineteenth Century.

and About South America' was recently reviewed in the ECLECTIC, and now we have before us the complement of the anthor's Spanish-American studies in these sketches of the five little Spanish republics between Mexico and the United States of Colombia.

Travellers in foreign countries may be classified under three titles-those who seek amusement and change, students of literature, government, social life, character, etc., and hunters for book-material. The late Bayard Taylor and the writer before us belong to the latter class. Travel with such men is a voca. tion like shop-keeping, and is primarily pur. sued for commercial reasons, That sarcasm

at Mr. Taylor's expense for a long time attributed to Humboldt, but now known to have been invented by the malice of the late Park Benjamin, "Bayard Taylor has travelled more and seen less than any man of the age," applies in some degree to all professional book-making travellers. To catch the picturesque surface of things and narrate them in a rattling, touch-and-go style, seems to be the ideal of the literary globe-trotter. Mr. Vincent in his latter books on Spanish America has not risen to the standard of his earlier work. The Central American sketches, too, are distinctly inferior to the book on South America. In the hurried journey through the Central American republics the traveller's aim seems to have been to do his work both of collecting and shaping his material as rapidly as possible, and the result is slovenly and superficial; the facts presented fall far short of the material open to one who depends as much on what lies behind his eyes as on that which opens in front of them, and there is an utter absence of penetrating observation and comment. These papers are such as might be rapidly made up from the random notes of a random traveller, and would be counted passably good newspaper contributions.

Central America has lately become far more interesting to us than of old. English and American enterprise have begun to flow into these stagnant little nationalities, and their marvellous possibilities of vegetable and mineral wealth are attracting attention. The Nicaragua Canal, which may be counted on as one of the certainties of the future, will open a new page in the history of this region. The author's carelessness of treatment is shown in the omission to give his readers a clear sketch of this great enterprise and its bearings on Central American prosperity. An accurate

and painstaking résumé of the relations of the South American republics would have thrown a good deal of light on those imbroglios and petty wars, which, beginning in the time of the late President Barrios of Guatemala are still volcanic and have within a few weeks caused so much attention to be drawn to this region. Political destiny would seem to point to a United States of Central America, a reorganized embodiment of the ideal which first marked separation from Spain a half century since. It would be very interesting to have a statement from a competent student of Central America as to all the causes political, historical, social, and geographical, which operate for and against in this problem. To disseminate light in such matters is the highest function of the intelligent traveller. One may study such phases of foreign life with zeal, without missing the picturesque and objective sides of things.

While our author is guilty of great shortcomings in discussing those questions which make books of travel really valuable, he often offers us graphic sketches of both city and rustic life. The curious mixture of barbarism and civilization so characteristic of the cities of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, etc., is presented in a vivid way, and the glimpses of social and governmental life are quite racy and amusing. What could be more significant, for example, than the picture of a military parade, where a battalion of ragged and barefooted privates is commanded by a crowd of strutting and brilliantly uniformed officers, almost as many in number as the rank and file? There is so much that is good in one way in these sketches that one regrets all the more the failure to touch matters of great importance. There is a place just now for a really thoughtful and comprehensive study of Central America, but Mr. Vincent has missed his opportunity, and instead of a book of lasting value has merely contributed pages of a diary fit to while away half an hour on the part of the reader. The other chapters are of more importance. The account of the vast and mysterious temple in Cambodia, the history of which antedates all reliable records, even tradition, is of great interest. This mighty fane, the monument of a past race, is in many respects a greater marvel than the Pharaonic remains of Egypt, or the ruins of Baalbec and Luxor in the Syrian desert. Its size, the symmetry of its proportions, the delicacy and beauty of the ornamentation, are such as to call forth the profoundest admira