h these Australian myths of the origin of certain
species of birds the Greek story of the origin of frogs, as told by
Menecrates and Nicander.(1) The frogs were herdsmen metamorphosed by
Leto, the mother of Apollo. But, by way of showing how closely akin are
the fancies of Greeks and Australian black fellows, we shall tell the
legend without the proper names, which gave it a fictitious dignity.

(1) Antoninus Liberalis, xxxv.

THE ORIGIN OF FROGS.

"A woman bore two children, and sought for a water-spring wherein to
bathe them. She found a well, but herdsmen drove her away from it that
their cattle might drink. Then some wolves met her and led her to a
river, of which she drank, and in its waters she bathed her children.
Then she went back to the well where the herdsmen were now bathing, and
she turned them all into frogs. She struck their backs and shoulders
with a rough stone and drove them into the waters, and ever since that
day frogs live in marshes and beside rivers."

A volume might be filled with such examples of the kindred fancies of
Greeks and savages. Enough has probably been said to illustrate our
point, which is that Greek myths of this character were inherited from
the period of savagery, when ideas of metamorphosis and of the kinship
of men and beasts were real practical beliefs. Events conceived to be
common in real life were introduced into myths, and these myths were
savage science, and were intended to account for the Origin of Species.
But when once this train of imagination has been fired, it burns on both
in literature and in the legends of the peasantry. Every one who
writes a Christmas tale for children now employs the machinery of
metamorphosis, and in European folk-lore, as Fontenelle remarked,
stories persist which are precisely similar in kind to the minor myths
of savages.

Reasoning in this wise, the Mundas of Bengal thus account for
peculiarities of certain animals. Sing Bonga, the chief god, cast
certain people out of heaven; they fell to earth, found iron ore, and
began smelting it. The black smoke displeased Sing Bonga, who sent two
king crows and an owl to bid people cease to pollute the atmosphere.
But the iron smelters spoiled these birds' tails, and blackened the
previously white crow, scorched its beak red, and flattened its head.
Sing Bonga burned man, and turned woman into hills and waterspouts.(1)

(1) Dalton, pp. 186, 187.

Examples of this class of myth in Ind