had to incur in
exploiting pearl-beds to obtain the precious "giver of life". But at the
time these great enterprises were first undertaken in the Indian Ocean
the people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the chief pearl-beds
regarded the sea as the great source of all life-giving virtues and the
god who exercised these powers was incarnated in a fish. The sharks
therefore had to be brought into harmony with this scheme, and they
were rationalized as the guardians of the storehouse of life-giving
pearls at the bottom of the sea.

I do not propose to discuss at present the diffusion to the East of the
beliefs concerning the shark and the modifications which they underwent
in the course of these migrations in Melanesia and elsewhere; but in my
lecture upon "the Birth of Aphrodite" I shall have occasion to refer to
its spread to the West and explain how the shark's role was transferred
to the dog-fish in the Mediterranean. The dog-fish then assumed a
terrestrial form and became simply the dog who plays such a strange part
in the magical ceremony of digging up the mandrake.

At present we are concerned merely with the shark as the guardian of the
stores of pearls at the bottom of the sea. He became identified with the
Naga and the dragon, and the store of pearls became a vast
treasure-house which it became one of the chief functions of the dragon
to guard. This episode in the wonder-beast's varied career has a place
in most of the legends ranging from Western Europe to Farthest Asia.
Sometimes the dragon carries a pearl under his tongue or in his chin as
a reserve of life-giving substance.

Mr. Donald Mackenzie has called attention[232] to the remarkable
influence upon the development of the Dragon Myth of the familiar
Egyptian representation of the child Horus with a finger touching his
lips. On some pretence or other, many of the European dragon-slaying
heroes, such as Sigurd and the Highland Finn, place their fingers in
their mouths. This action is usually rationalized by the statement that
the hero burnt his fingers while cooking the slain monster.

[231: Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 476.]

[232: "Egyptian Myth and Legend," pp. 340 _et seq._]

The Ethical Aspect.

So far in this discussion I have been dealing mainly with the problems
of the dragon's evolution, the attainment of his or her distinctive
anatomical features and physiological attributes. But during this
process of development a mora