o-Aryan literature are not hard
to find. Why is dawn red? Why are donkeys slow? Why have mules no young
ones? Mules have no foals because they were severely burned when Agni
(fire) drove them in a chariot race. Dawn is red, not because (as in
Australia) she wears a red kangaroo cloak, but because she competed in
this race with red cows for her coursers. Donkeys are slow because they
never recovered from their exertions in the same race, when the Asvins
called on their asses and landed themselves the winners.(1) And cows
are accommodated with horns for a reason no less probable and
satisfactory.(2)

(1) Aitareya Brahmana, ii. 272, iv. 9.

(2) iv. 17.

Though in the legends of the less developed peoples men and women are
more frequently metamorphosed into birds and beasts than into stones
and plants, yet such changes of form are by no means unknown. To the
north-east of Western Point there lies a range of hills, inhabited,
according to the natives of Victoria, by a creature whose body is made
of stone, and weapons make no wound in so sturdy a constitution. The
blacks refuse to visit the range haunted by the mythic stone beast.
"Some black fellows were once camped at the lakes near Shaving Point.
They were cooking their fish when a native dog came up. They did not
give him anything to eat. He became cross and said, 'You black fellows
have lots of fish, but you give me none'. So he changed them all into a
big rock. This is quite true, for the big rock is there to this day, and
I have seen it with my own eyes."(1) Another native, Toolabar, says that
the women of the fishing party cried out yacka torn, "very good". A dog
replied yacka torn, and they were all changed into rocks. This very man,
Toolabar, once heard a dog begin to talk, whereupon he and his father
fled. Had they waited they would have become stones. "We should have
been like it, wallung," that is, stones.

(1) Native narrator, ap. Brough Smyth, i. 479.

Among the North American Indians any stone which has a resemblance to
the human or animal figure is explained as an example of metamorphosis.
Three stones among the Aricaras were a girl, her lover and her dog, who
fled from home because the course of true love did not run smooth, and
who were petrified. Certain stones near Chinook Point were sea-giants
who swallowed a man. His brother, by aid of fire, dried up the bay and
released the man, still alive, from the body of the giant. Then the
giants wer