remains indelibly depicted in the religions of the present day, furnishing us with the key to the study of comparative mythology. It will be necessary, in order to compare, with any degree of accuracy, the mythological systems which subsequently developed from this primitive conception of a ruling power, to glance at the mode of distribution of the various branches of the earliest human family; and in doing so we must ever keep in mind the more than probable fact that that portion of the earth’s surface which is now covered by the Indian Ocean once formed a large equatorial continent, uniting the east coast of Africa with Arabia, India, Ceylon, and the Malay Peninsula. Instead of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates emptying their waters into the Persian Gulf, and the Indus into the Arabian Sea, it is highly probable that these rivers united to form one large estuary, which emptied itself into the ocean on the south of the now submerged continent of Lemuria. It is equally probable that the large rivers, Ganges and Brahmapootra, likewise found an outlet south of a line drawn from Point de Gall to Singapore. On this submerged continent, and on the shores of these long-lost streams, it is supposed man evolved from the anthropoid apes, in the early Pleiocene, or perhaps even in the later Meiocene, geological period of the world’s history. The transition stage in the pedigree of man between the Anthropoidæ and true men—that is to say, between man-like Catarrhine apes and beings possessing a larger proportion of the characteristics of the human than of the ape species—is known to Anthropologists by the name of Alali, or ape-like men. These wild and ill-formed savages wandered about in bands along the banks of these monster rivers, passing their time in hunting their less fortunate brethren of the animal kind. In course of time they multiplied and spread over the entire continent, killing all such monsters as interfered with their safety or comfort, and gradually dividing and sub-dividing into families and races, each acquiring, under the influence of the two laws of selection and adaptation, peculiarities and characteristics not common to the remainder. One branch wandered away to the west and south, becoming the progenitors of the South African races; another found its way to the east and south, to people Australasia; while a third struck out towards the north, overrunning Malaya, Burmah, and Southern India. This last branch, which we term the Malay, or Polynesian, subdivided into two distinct families—the Mongolian, or Turanian, the progenitors of the ancient Chinese, Ural Turks, Akkadians, and Finns; and the Caucasian, or Iranian, the first human inhabitants of South-Western Asia. Of these Iranians one stream, it is supposed, found its way to the banks of the Nile, and became, in course of time, a distinct and powerful Egyptian race; another, the Semitic, followed the direction of the Persian