So came most of the monsters we have been describing--Animals, Volcanoes, Icebergs, Deserts, though they might be--by growing culture and mastery of nature to be called 'the little people;' and perhaps it is rather through pity than euphemism when they were so often called, as in Ireland (Duine Matha), 'the good little people.' [216] At every step in time or space back of the era of mechanic arts the little fairy gains in physical proportions. The house-spirits (Domovoi) of Russia are full-sized, shaggy human-shaped beings. In Lithuania the corresponding phantoms (Kaukas) average only a foot in height. The Krosnyata, believed in by the Slavs on the Baltic coast, are similarly small; and by way of the kobolds, elves, fays, travelling westward, we find the size of such shapes diminishing, until warnings are given that the teeth must never be picked with a straw, that slender tube being a favourite residence of the elf! In Bavaria a little red chafer with seven spots (Coccinella septempunctata) is able to hold Thor with his lightnings, and in other regions is a form of the goddess of Love! [217] Our English name for the tiny beetle 'Lady-bug' is derived from the latter notion; and Mr. Karl Blind has expressed the opinion that our children's rune-- Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, Thy house is on fire, thy children will roam-- is last echo of the Eddaic prophecies of the destruction of the universe by the fire-fiend Loki! [218] Such reductions of the ancient gods, demons, and terrors to tiny dimensions would, of course, be only an indirect result of the general cause stated. They were driven from the great world, and sought the small world: they survived in the hut and were adapted to the nerves of the nursery. So alone can Tithonos live on: beyond the age for which he is born he shrinks to a grasshopper; and it is now by only careful listening that in the chirpings of the multitudinous immortals, of which Tithonos is type, may be distinguished the thunders and roarings of deities and demons that once made the earth to tremble. CHAPTER II. GENERALISATION OF DEMONS. The Demons' bequest to their conquerors--Nondescripts-- Exaggerations of tradition--Saurian Theory of Dragons-- The Dragon not primitive in Mythology--Monsters of Egyptian, Iranian, Vedic, and Jewish Mythologies--Turner's Dragon-- Della Bella--The Conventional Dragon.