being duly incensed at having received such treatment, raised
his claws, and scratched the moon's face; and the dark parts which
we now see on the surface of the moon are the scars which she
received on that occasion." [83] In an account of the Hottentot myth
of the "Origin of Death," the angered moon heats a stone and burns
the hare's mouth, causing the hare-lip. [84] Dr. Marshall may tell us,
with all the authority of an eminent physiologist, that hare-lip is
occasioned by an arrest in the development of certain frontal and
nasal processes, [85] and we may receive his explanation as a
sweetly simple solution of the question; but who that suffers from
this leporine-labial deformity would not prefer a supernatural to a
natural cause? Better far that the lip should be cleft by Shakespeare's
"foul fiend Flibbertigibbet," than that an abnormal condition should
be accounted for by science, or comprised within the reign of
physical law.

Even Europe is somewhat hare-brained: for Caesar tells us that the
Britons did not regard it lawful to eat the hare, though he does not
say why; and in Swabia still, children are forbidden to make
shadows on the wall to represent the sacred hare of the moon.

We may pursue this matter even in Mexico, whose deities and
myths a recent Hibbert lecturer brought into clearer light, showing
that the Mexicans "possessed beliefs, institutions, and a developed
mythology which would bear comparison with anything known to
antiquity in the old world." [86] The Tezcucans, as they are usually
called, are described by Prescott as "a nation of the same great
family with the Aztecs, whom they rivalled in power, and surpassed
in intellectual culture and the arts of social refinement." [87] Their
account of the creation is that "the sun and moon came out equally
bright, but this not seeming good to the gods, one of them took a
rabbit by the heels and slung it into the face of the moon, dimming
its lustre with a blotch, whose mark may be seen to this day." [88]

We have now seen that the fancy of a hare in the moon is universal;
but not so much importance is to be attached to this, as to some
other aspects of moon mythology. The hare-like patch is visible in
every land, and suggested the animal to all observers. That the
rabbit's period of gestation is thirty days is a singular coincidence;
but that is all--nay, it is not even that, for "the moon's revolution
round the earth," which Douce supposed the Chine