actions that would have been held infamous among human citizens. We cannot conceive such citizens building temples, and offering incense to such atrocious conceptions—nay, that even while regulating their daily lives in modes conformable to exalted ideas of morality they could worship beings whose conduct, as related by priest and poet, was tainted with diabolical crime. Comparative mythology has come to explain this mystification, this benumbing ignorance of ours in regard to the thoughts and devotions of the men of an elder day; and it shows us that the action of natural phenomena has been riddled about till Light and Darkness, Dawn and Sunset, Storm and Calm, Fire and Water—aye, even Beauty and Ugliness—have been hidden under names that when misunderstood (“diseased”) have brought about as a result unbelievable life-histories of divine personages. As an example, take the Samoan tradition of Space. It says,— Space had a long-legged seat. At another birth Cloudy Heavens brought forth a head. This was the head that was said to have fallen from the heavens. Space set it upon his high stool, and said to it, “O beloved! be a son; be a second with me on the earth.” Space started back, for all of a sudden the body of a man-child was added to the head. The child was sensible, and inquired who his father was. Space replied, “Your father is yonder in the east, yonder in the west, yonder towards the sea, and yonder inland, yonder above and yonder below.” Then the boy said, “I have found my name, call me ‘All-the-sides-of-heaven.”” And from him sprang the four divisions, East, West, North, and South. Who would be surprised if he were to find in some other place the above legend humanised?—that is, that there was a chief once who was named “The Sides of Heaven”; that he had fathers named East and West, who were also his sons, East and West. It is enigmatic, riddling, but not inexplicable. Riddles such as these are still asked as an amusement in Samoa. There, for instance, the natives find recreation in making puzzling inquiries about natural objects. They will say, “There is a man who calls out continually, day and night.” The explanation is, “The surf on the reef.” Again, they say, “A man who has a white head stands above the fence, and reaches to the heavens.” Explanation: “The smoke rising from the oven.” And so on. There is no difference between such riddles and that quoted by Mannhardt from the Russian, “What is the red gown before the forest and before the grove?” and answered by the Lett legend that tells how the Sun-daughter (the Dawn) hangs her red gown on the great oak-tree.* Max Müller, Cont. Sci. Myth. i., 83. Whether we speak of sun, or surf, or smoke in this manner the observed action of the natural object has, as soon as