Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/373

 Animal Myths and their Origin. 41

upon the anterior and posterior limbs. That there is any causal connection between toads and warts is doubtful. Victims of the poisonous secretions of this animal coincidently may have developed warts, or perhaps only the suggestion of its warty skin, on the law of like begetting like, may have given rise to the notion. Since a knowledge of cutaneous glands is not widely distributed, the natural inference would be, once the idea is entertained, that either the saliva or urine of the toad is the cause of the warts, or other mis- fortunes suffered.

Another curious myth concerning toads, along with frogs, earth- worms, and other animals, is that they come down in showers. After larval development, the young toads leave the water in large numbers and migrate, hiding by day and usually only at night hop- ping from place to place. At this time, if rain fall, the toads come out from concealment, and thus being seen by the people in such large numbers in a locality where but few, if any, had been observed previously, the supposition of the toad-shower naturally arose. 1 In spite of this zoological explanation the mythologist may turn to Ovid and read that the Curetes, the ancient inhabitants of Crete, sprang from earth after a shower, and thus interpret these animal showers as but other instances of the release of the imprisoned light from its enemy darkness.

The origin of myths of spontaneous generation, or of transforma- tion, either comes from erroneous observation or as a result of imperfect induction from phenomena carefully and properly observed. In the history of zoology before the days of careful dissection and microscopic analysis, it was the general custom to relate any won- derful story about animals with the expectation of unquestioned acceptance of the tale. Then later on as skeptics arose and ex- pressed their doubts, it became essential to collect the animal itself in proof of the statements. With the animal or its principle parts as a voucher, the narrative necessarily must be believed, just as the picture of this morning's battle in South Africa, printed in the last edition of to-day's paper, is given to a credulous public as incontest- able evidence of the truthfulness of everything depicted !

The field of animal myths is so large that in the short time at my disposal only a few cases within one section have been considered. A large province of our general territory, that of totemism, must be dismissed with but a word. The totem, as the sign manual of the clan, is generally taken to indicate a descent from the animal or plant referred to, 2 and the friendly ghost of the ancestor hovers

1 E. D. Cope, in Standard Natural History, vol. iii. p. 328, Boston, 1885. See, also, Gilbert White, Natural History of Selborne.

2 J. G. Frazer, Encyc. Brit, xxiii. 471.

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