en he took the piece of
money for Caesar's tax out of the fish's mouth.

Turning from folk-lore to savage beliefs, we learn that from one end of
Africa to another the honey-bird, schneter, is said to be an old woman
whose son was lost, and who pursued him till she was turned into a bird,
which still shrieks his name, "Schneter, Schneter".(1) In the same way
the manners of most of the birds known to the Greeks were accounted for
by the myth that they had been men and women. Zeus, for example, turned
Ceyx and Halcyon into sea-fowls because they were too proud in their
married happiness.(2) To these myths of the origin of various animals
we shall return, but we must not forget the black and white Australian
pelican. Why is the pelican parti-coloured?(3) For this reason: After
the Flood (the origin of which is variously explained by the Murri), the
pelican (who had been a black fellow) made a canoe, and went about
like a kind of Noah, trying to save the drowning. In the course of his
benevolent mission he fell in love with a woman, but she and her friends
played him a trick and escaped from him. The pelican at once prepared to
go on the war-path. The first thing to do was to daub himself white,
as is the custom of the blacks before a battle. They think the white
pipe-clay strikes terror and inspires respect among the enemy. But when
the pelican was only half pipe-clayed, another pelican came past, and,
"not knowing what such a queer black and white thing was, struck the
first pelican with his beak and killed him. Before that pelicans were
all black; now they are black and white. That is the reason."(4)

(1) Barth, iii. 358.

(2) Apollodorus, i. 7 (13, 12).

(3) Sahagun, viii. 2, accounts for colours of eagle and tiger. A number
of races explain the habits and marks of animals as the result of a
curse or blessing of a god or hero. The Hottentots, the Huarochiri of
Peru, the New Zealanders (Shortland, Traditions, p. 57), are among the
peoples which use this myth.

(4) Brough Symth, Aborigines of Australia, i. 477, 478.

"That is the reason." Therewith native philosopy is satisfied, and does
not examine in Mr. Darwin's laborious manner the slow evolution of the
colour of the pelican's plumage. The mythological stories about animals
are rather difficult to treat, because they are so much mixed up with
the topic of totemism. Here we only examine myths which account by means
of a legend for certain peculiarities in the