It may be often difficult to ascertain in what particular country or among what people a superstition was last found, but there is very little trouble when we compare the great body of all such beliefs of all races and ages and thereby find the parent sources. It is not many years since philologists, having taken up some favourite language--for instance, Irish--discovering many words in many tongues almost identical with others in "Earse," boldly claimed that this tongue was the original of all the others. Now we find the roots of them all in the Aryan. So when we examine Folk-lore, it is doubtless of great importance that we should learn where a tradition last lived; but we must not stop there--we must keep on inquiring till we reach the beginning. As a rule, with little exception, when we find anywhere the grosser forms of fetish and black witchcraft, we may conclude that we have remains of the world's oldest faith, or first beginning of supernaturalism in suffering and terror, a fear of mysterious evil influences. For with all due respect to the fact that such superstitions might have sprung up sporadically wherever similar causes existed to create them, it is, in the first place, a very rare chance that they should assume exactly like forms. Secondly, we must consider that as there are even now millions of people who receive with ready faith and carefully nurse these primæval beliefs, so there has been from the beginning of time abundant opportunity for their transmission and growth. Thirdly, nothing is so quickly transmitted as Folk-lore, which in one sense includes myths and religion. If jade was in the prehistoric stone age carried from Iona or Tartary all over Europe, it is even more probable that myths went with it quite as far and fast.