these myths may be observed
in a fragment of Philemon, the comic poet. "Never, by the gods, have I
believed, nor will believe, that Niobe the stone was once a woman. Nay,
by reason of her calamities she became speechless, and so, from her
silence, was called a stone."(3)

(1) Pindar, Pyth. x., Myers's translation.

(2) xxiv. 611.

(3) The Scholiast on Iliad, xxiv. 6, 7.

There is another famous petrification in the Iliad. When the prodigy
of the snake and the sparrows had appeared to the assembled Achaeans
at Aulis, Zeus displayed a great marvel, and changed into a stone the
serpent which swallowed the young of the sparrow. Changes into stone,
though less common than changes into fishes, birds and beasts, were thus
obviously not too strange for the credulity of Greek mythology, which
could also believe that a stone became the mother of Agdestis by Zeus.

As to interchange of shape between men and women and PLANTS, our
information, so far as the lower races are concerned, is less copious.
It has already been shown that the totems of many stocks in all parts
of the world are plants, and this belief in connection with a plant by
itself demonstrates that the confused belief in all things being on one
level has thus introduced vegetables into the dominion of myth. As far
as possessing souls is concerned, Mr. Tylor has proved that plants are
as well equipped as men or beasts or minerals.(1) In India the doctrine
of transmigration widely and clearly recognises the idea of trees or
smaller plants being animated by human souls. In the well-known ancient
Egyptian story of "The Two Brothers,"(2) the life of the younger is
practically merged in that of the acacia tree where he has hidden his
heart; and when he becomes a bull and is sacrificed, his spiritual part
passes into a pair of Persea trees. The Yarucaris of Bolivia say that a
girl once bewailed in the forest her loverless estate. She happened to
notice a beautiful tree, which she adorned with ornaments as well as she
might. The tree assumed the shape of a handsome young man--

She did not find him so remiss,
But, lightly issuing through,
He did repay her kiss for kiss,
With usury thereto.(3)

J. G. Muller, who quotes this tale from Andree, says it has "many
analogies with the tales of metamorphosis of human beings into trees
among the ancients, as reported by Ovid". The worship of plants and
trees is a well-known feature in religion, and