Thus there is necessarily an eternal come and go
of all the animal names known in a district. As civilisation advances
these rules grow obsolete. People take their names from the father, as
among ourselves. Finally the dwellers in a given district, having
become united into a local tribe, are apt to drop the various animal
titles and to adopt, as the name of the whole tribe, the name of the
chief, or of the predominating family. Let us imagine a district of
some twenty miles in which there are Crane, Wolf, Turtle, and Swan
families. Long residence together, and common interests, have welded
them into a local tribe. The chief is of the Wolf family, and the
tribe, sinking family differences and family names, calls itself 'the
Wolves.' Such tribes were probably, in the beginning, the inhabitants
of the various Egyptian towns which severally worshipped the wolf, or
the sheep, or the crocodile, and abstained religiously (except on
certain sacrificial occasions) from the flesh of the animal that gave
them its name.[114]

* * * * *

It has taken us long to reach the Sacred Mice of Greek religion, but
we are now in a position to approach their august divinity. We have
seen that the sun-worship superseded, without abolishing, the tribal
_pacarissas_ in Peru, and that the _huacas_, or images, of the sacred
animals were admitted under the roof of the temple of the Sun. Now it
is recognised that the temples of the Sminthian Apollo contained
images of sacred mice among other animals, and our argument is that
here, perhaps, we have another example of the Peruvian religious
evolution. Just as, in Peru, the tribes adored 'vile and filthy'
animals, just as the solar worship of the Incas subordinated these,
just as the _huacas_ of the beasts remained in the temples of the
Peruvian Sun; so, we believe, the tribes along the Mediterranean
coasts had, at some very remote prehistoric period, their animal
_pacarissas_; these were subordinated to the religion (to some extent
solar) of Apollo; and the _huacas_, or animal idols, survived in
Apollo's temples.

* * * * *

If this theory be correct, we shall probably find the mouse, for
example, revered as a sacred animal in many places. This would
necessarily follow, if the marriage customs which we have described
ever prevailed on Greek soil, and scattered the mouse-name far and
wide.[115] Traces of the Mouse families, and of adora