the divine king of birds, Garuda, is Vishnu's vehicle; the forms of fish, and boar, and tortoise, were assumed in those avatar-legends of Vishnu which are at the intellectual level of the Red Indian myths they so curiously resemble.[1] The conceptions which underlie the Hindu creed of divine animals were not ill displayed by that Hindu who, being shown the pictures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with their respective man, lion, ox, and eagle, explained these quite naturally and satisfactorily as the avatars or vehicles of the four evangelists.
In Animal-worship, some of the most remarkable cases of development and survival belong to a class from which striking instances have already been taken. Serpent-worship unfortunately fell years ago into the hands of speculative writers, who mixed it up with occult philosophies, Druidical mysteries, and that portentous nonsense called the 'Arkite Symbolism,' till now sober students hear the very name of Ophiolatry with a shiver. Yet it is in itself a rational and instructive subject of inquiry, especially notable for its width of range in mythology and religion. We may set out among the lower races, with such accounts as those of the Red Indian's reverence to the rattlesnake, as grandfather and king of snakes, as a divine protector able to give fair winds or cause tempests;[2] or of the worship of great snakes among the tribes of Peru before they received the religion of the Incas, as to whom an old author says, 'They adore the demon when he presents himself to them in the figure of some beast or serpent, and talks with them.'[3] Thenceforth such examples of direct Ophiolatry may be traced on into classic and barbaric Europe; the great serpent which defended the citadel of Athens and enjoyed its monthly honey-cakes;[4] the Roman genius loci appearing in the form of the snake (Nullus enim locus sine
