the different deities. But it is obvious that the phenomena which we
have been studying may be otherwise explained. It may be said that the
Sminthian Apollo was only revered as the enemy and opponent of mice. St.
Gertrude (whose heart was eaten by mice) has the same role in France.
{119} The worship of Apollo, and the badge of the mouse, would, on this
principle, be diffused by colonies from some centre of the faith. The
images of mice in Apollo's temples would be nothing more than votive
offerings. Thus, in the church of a Saxon town, the verger shows a
silver mouse dedicated to Our Lady. 'This is the greatest of our
treasures,' says the verger. 'Our town was overrun with mice till the
ladies of the city offered this mouse of silver. Instantly all the mice
disappeared.' 'And are you such fools as to believe that the creatures
went away because a silver mouse was dedicated?' asked a Prussian
officer. 'No,' replied the verger, rather neatly; 'or long ago we should
have offered a silver Prussian.'

STAR MYTHS.

Artemus Ward used to say that, while there were many things in the
science of astronomy hard to be understood, there was one fact which
entirely puzzled him. He could partly perceive how we 'weigh the sun,'
and ascertain the component elements of the heavenly bodies, by the aid
of spectrum analysis. 'But what beats me about the stars,' he observed
plaintively, 'is how we come to know their names.' This question, or
rather the somewhat similar question, 'How did the constellations come by
their very peculiar names?' has puzzled Professor Pritchard and other
astronomers more serious than Artemus Ward. Why is a group of stars
called the Bear, or the Swan, or the Twins, or named after the Pleiades,
the fair daughters of the Giant Atlas? {121} These are difficulties that
meet even children when they examine a 'celestial globe.' There they
find the figure of a bear, traced out with lines in the intervals between
the stars of the constellations, while a very imposing giant is so drawn
that Orion's belt just fits his waist. But when he comes to look at the
heavens, the infant speculator sees no sort of likeness to a bear in the
stars, nor anything at all resembling a giant in the neighbourhood of
Orion. The most eccentric modern fancy which can detect what shapes it
will in clouds, is unable to find any likeness to human or animal forms
in the stars, and yet we call a great many of the stars by