to it are sold at this season." [94] We
have little doubt that what the Chinese look for they see. We in the
West characterize and colour objects which we behold, as we see
them through the painted windows of our predisposition or
prejudice. As a great novelist writes: "From the same object
different conclusions are drawn; the most common externals of
nature, the wind and the wave, the stars and the heavens, the very
earth on which we tread, never excite in different bosoms the same
ideas; and it is from our own hearts, and not from an outward
source, that we draw the hues which colour the web of our
existence. It is true, answered Clarence. You remember that in
two specks of the moon the enamoured maiden perceived two
unfortunate lovers, while the ambitious curate conjectured that they
were the spires of a cathedral." [95] Besides, it must be confessed
that the particular moon-patch that has awakened so much interest in
every age and nation is quite as much like a frog or toad as it is like
a rabbit or hare.

[*] Mr. Herbert A. Giles says that How I was a legendary chieftain,
who "flourished about 2,500 B.C." _Strange Stories from a Chinese
Studio_, London, 1880, i. 19, _note_.

VI. OTHER MOON MYTHS.

It is almost time that we should leave this lunar zoology; we will
therefore merely present a few creatures which may be of service in
a comparative anatomy of the whole subject, and then close the
account. There is a story told in the Fiji Islands which so nearly
approaches the Hottentot legend of the hare, that they both seem but
variations of a common original. In the one case the opponent of the
moon's benevolent purpose affecting man's hereafter was a hare, in
the other a rat. The story thus runs: There was "a contest between
two gods as to how man should die. Ra Vula (the moon) contended
that man should be like himself--disappear awhile, and then live
again. Ra Kalavo (the rat) would not listen to this kind proposal, but
said, 'Let man die as a rat dies.' And he prevailed." [96] Mr. Tylor,
who quotes this rat story, adds: "The dates of the versions seem to
show that the presence of these myths among the Hottentots and
Fijians, at the two opposite sides of the globe, is at any rate not due
to transmission in modern times." [97]

From the rat to one of its mortal enemies is an easy transition. The
Australian story is that Mityan, the moon, was a native cat, who fell
in love with another's wife, and while tr