We do not know, and how can the Australians know, that the lost star was once the brightest? It appears to me that the Australians, remarking the disappearance of a star, might very naturally suppose that the _Crow_ had selected for his wife that one which had been the most brilliant of the cluster. Besides, the wide distribution of the tale among the natives, and the very great change in the nature of the incidents, seem to point to a native origin. Though the main conception--the loss of one out of seven maidens--is identical in Greek and in _Murri_, the manner of the disappearance is eminently Hellenic in the one case, eminently savage in the other. However this may be, nothing of course is proved by a single example. Let us next examine the stars _Castor_ and _Pollux_. Both in Greece and in Australia these are said once to have been two young men. In the _Catasterismoi_, already spoken of, we read: 'The _Twins_, or _Dioscouroi_.--They were nurtured in Lacedæmon, and were famous for their brotherly love, wherefore, Zeus, desiring to make their memory immortal, placed them both among the stars.' In Australia, according to Mr. Brough Smyth (_Aborigines of Victoria_), _Turree_ (_Castor_) and _Wanjel_ (_Pollux_) are two young men who pursue _Purra_ and kill him at the commencement of the great heat. _Coonar toorung_ (the mirage) is the smoke of the fire by which they roast him. In Greece it was not Castor and Pollux, but _Orion_ who was the great hunter placed among the stars. Among the Bushmen of South Africa, _Castor_ and _Pollux_ are not young men, but young women, the wives of the Eland, the great native antelope. In Greek star-stories the _Great Bear_ keeps watch, Homer says, on the hunter Orion for fear of a sudden attack. But how did the Bear get its name in Greece? According to Hesiod, the oldest Greek poet after Homer, the Bear was once a lady, daughter of Lycaon, King of Arcadia. She was a nymph of the train of chaste Artemis, but yielded to the love of Zeus, and became the ancestress of all the Arcadians. Changed by Zeus to a bestial form, she was shot by Artemis, and then translated by Zeus to the stars (Apollod., iii. 8; Eustath., 1156; Bachofen, _Der Bär_, p. 14).[144] Here we must notice first, that the Arcadians, like Australians, Red Indians, and other wild races, and like the Bedouins, believed themselves to be descended from a girl who became an animal. That the early Egyptians did the same is not improbable; for names of animals are found among the ancestors in the very oldest genealogical papyrus,[145] as in the genealogies of the old English kings. Next the Arcadians transferred the ancestral bear to the heavens, and, in doing this, they resembled the Peruvians, of whom Acosta says: 'They adored the star _Urchuchilly_, feigning it to be a _Ram_, and worshipped two others, and say that one of them is a _sheep_, and the other a lamb ... others worshipped the star called the _Tiger_. _They were of