Now it is time to prove the truth of our assertion that the star-stories of savage and of civilised races closely resemble each other. Let us begin with that well-known group the _Pleiades_. The peculiarity of the _Pleiades_ is that the group consists of seven stars, of which one is so dim that it seems entirely to disappear, and many persons can only detect its presence through a telescope. The Greeks had a myth to account for the vanishing of the lost Pleiad. The tale is given in the _Catasterismoi_ (stories of metamorphoses into stars) attributed to Eratosthenes. This work was probably written after our era; but the author derived his information from older treatises now lost. According to the Greek myth, then, the seven stars of the Pleiad were seven maidens, daughters of the Giant Atlas. Six of them had gods for lovers; Poseidon admired two of them, Zeus three, and Ares one; but the seventh had only an earthly wooer, and when all of them were changed into stars, the maiden with the mortal lover hid her light for shame. Now let us compare the Australian story. According to Mr. Dawson (_Australian Aborigines_), a writer who understands the natives well, 'their knowledge of the heavenly bodies greatly exceeds that of most white people,' and 'is taught by men selected for their intelligence and information. The knowledge is important to the aborigines on their night journeys;' so we may be sure that the natives are careful observers of the heavens, and are likely to be conservative of their astronomical myths. The 'Lost Pleiad' has not escaped them, and this is how they account for her disappearance. The _Pirt Kopan noot_ tribe have a tradition that the _Pleiades_ were a queen and her six attendants. Long ago the _Crow_ (our _Canopus_) fell in love with the queen, who refused to be his wife. The _Crow_ found that the queen and her six maidens, like other Australian _gins_, were in the habit of hunting for white edible grubs in the bark of trees. The _Crow_ at once changed himself into a grub (just as Jupiter and Indra used to change into swans, horses, ants, or what not) and hid in the bark of a tree. The six maidens sought to pick him out with their wooden hooks, but he broke the points of all the hooks. Then came the queen with her pretty bone hook; he let himself be drawn out, took the shape of a giant, and ran away with her. Ever since there have only been six stars, the six maidens, in the _Pleiad_. This story is well known, by the strictest inquiry, to be current among the blacks of the West District and South Australia. Mr. Tylor, whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, thinks that this may be a European myth, told by some settler to a black in the Greek form, and then spread about among the natives. He complains that the story of the loss of the _brightest_ star does not fit the facts of the case.