e from among savages, drive away the evil spirits
of diseases with magic songs, accompanied by drums on which demons are
painted. To these mythical ideas we must refer the worship of trees,
which involves that of birds, so far as they whistle and sing.

The worship of trees and groves is universal: peculiar trees, groves,
and woods are worshipped in Tahiti, in the Fiji Islands, and throughout
Polynesia; in barbarous Asia, in Europe, America, and the whole of
Africa. Cameron, Schweinfurth, Stanley, and other modern travellers in
Africa give many instances of this. Schweinfurth describes such a
worship among the Niam-Niam, who hold that the forest is inhabited by
invisible beings. This worship is naturally combined with that of birds,
which become the confidants of the forest, repeat the mysteries of
mother earth, and sometimes become interpreters and prophets to man.

Birds, by their power of moving through the air as lords of the aerial
space, by their arts of building, by the beauty of their plumage, their
secret haunts in the forests and rocks, by their frequent appearance
both by day and night, and by the variety of their songs, must
necessarily have excited the fetishtic fancy of primitive men. The
worship of birds was therefore universal, in connection with that of
trees, meteors, and waters. They were supposed to cause storms; and the
eagle, the falcon, the magpie, and some other birds brought the
celestial fire on the earth. The worship of birds is also common in
America, and in Central America the bird voc is the messenger of
Hurakau, the god of storms. The magic-doctors of the Cri, of the
Arikari, and of the Indians of the Antilles, wore the feathers and
images of the owl as an emblem of the divine inspiration by which they
were animated. Similar beliefs are common in Africa and Polynesia.[39]
It is well known that the Egyptians worshipped the ibis, the hawk, and
other birds, and that the Greeks worshipped birds and trees at Dodona,
in consequence of a celebrated oracle. In Italy the lapwing and the
magpie became Pilumnus and Picus, who led the Sabines into Picenus.
Divination by eagles and other birds was practised at Rome, and German,
Slav, and Celtic traditions abound in similar myths.[40] Nor are they
wanting in the Bible itself, in which we hear of the trees of knowledge
and of life, of some celebrated trees in the times of the patriarchs, of
the raven and the dove sent out as messengers. The Old Testament