orm, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is
expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future
state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their
present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and
birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties,
and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient,
doctrine of transmigration.

One of the most curious opinions of this people is their belief in the
mysterious and sacred character of fire. They obtain sacred fire, for
all national and ecclesiastical purposes, from the flint. Their national
pipes are lighted with this fire. It is symbolical of purity. Their
notions of the boundary between life and death, which is also
symbolically the limit of the material verge between this and a future
state, are revealed in connection with the exhibition of flames of fire.
They also make sacrifices by fire of some part of the first fruits of
the chase. These traits are to be viewed, perhaps, in relation to their
ancient worship of the sun, above noticed, of which the traditions and
belief are still generally preserved. The existence of the numerous
classes of jossakeeds, or mutterers (the word is from the utterance of
sounds low on the earth), is a trait that will remind the reader of a
similar class of men in early ages in the eastern hemisphere. These
persons constitute, indeed, the Magi of our western forests.

* * * * *

=_Edward Everett, 1794-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.)

From "Orations and Speeches."

=_190._= ASTRONOMY, FOR ALL TIME.

There is much by day to engage the attention of the observatory; the
sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on his disk (to
us the faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his
luminous atmosphere), a solar eclipse, a transit of the interior
planets, the mysteries of the spectrum--all phenomena of vast importance
and interest. But night is the astronomer's accepted time: he goes to
his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its rest. A dark pall
spreads over the resorts of active life; terrestrial objects, hill and
valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes of men, disappear; but the
curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine
and there they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton and
Galileo, of Kepler and Copernicus, of Ptol