gth in fighting.

(1) See authorities ap. Dorman, Primitive Superstitions, pp. 130-138.

(2) Dorman, p. 133.

(3) Many examples are collected by J. G. Muller, Amerikanischen
Urreligionen, pp. 97, 110, 125, especially when the stones have a
likeness to human form, p. 17a. "Im der That werden auch einige in
Steine, oder in Thiere and Pflanzen verwandelt." Cf. p. 220. Instances
(from Balboa) of men turned into stone by wizards, p. 309.

(4) Preller thinks that Actaeon, devoured by his hounds after being
changed into a stag, is a symbol of the vernal year. Palaephatus (De
Fab. Narrat.) holds that the story is a moral fable.

(5) Dorman, p. 137.

(6) Turner's Samoa, p. 299.

(7) Samoa, p. 31.

(8) Op. cit., p. 34.

(9) Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 60.

(10) Codrington, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881.

Without delaying longer among savage myths of metamorphosis into stones,
it may be briefly shown that the Greeks retained this with all the other
vagaries of early fancy. Every one remembers the use which Perseus made
of the Gorgon's head, and the stones on the coast of Seriphus, which,
like the stones near Western Point in Victoria, had once been men, the
enemies of the hero. "Also he slew the Gorgon," sings Pindar, "and bare
home her head, with serpent tresses decked, to the island folk a stony
death." Observe Pindar's explanatory remark: "I ween there is no marvel
impossible if gods have wrought thereto". In the same pious spirit a
Turk in an isle of the Levant once told Mr. Newton a story of how a man
hunted a stag, and the stag spoke to him. "The stag spoke?" said Mr.
Newton. "Yes, by Allah's will," replied the Turk. Like Pindar, he was
repeating an incident quite natural to the minds of Australians, or
Bushmen, or Samoans, or Red Men, but, like the religious Pindar, he
felt that the affair was rather marvellous, and accounted for it by
the exercise of omnipotent power.(1) The Greek example of Niobe and
her children may best be quoted in Mr. Bridges' translation from the
Iliad:--

And somewhere now, among lone mountain rocks
On Sipylus, where couch the nymphs at night
Who dance all day by Achelous' stream,
The once proud mother lies, herself a rook,
And in cold breast broods o'er the goddess' wrong.
--Prometheus the fire-bringer.(2)

In the Iliad it is added that Cronion made the people into stones. The
attitude of the later Greek mind towards