was the badge, and very probably some great and fierce wild-cat the ancestor, in popular belief, of the fighting clan Chattan. But in all these various and discordant myths of the creation of man, it is evident there is nothing which comes within a hundred miles of being a possible historical reminiscence of anything that actually occurred; and they must be relegated to the same place as the corresponding myths of the creation of the animal world and of the universe. They are neither more or less credible than the theories that the earth is a great tortoise floating on the water, or the sky a crystal dome with windows in it to let down the rain, and stars hung from it like lamps to illuminate a tea-garden. Even when we come to comparatively recent periods, and have to deal with traditions, not of how races originated, but how they came into the abodes where we find them, it is astonishing how little we can depend on anything prior to written records. Most ancient nations fancied themselves autochthonous, and took a pride in believing that they sprang from the soil on which they lived. And this is also the case with ruder races, unless where the migrations and conquests recorded are of very recent date. Thus Ancient Egypt believed itself to be autochthonous, and traced the origin of arts and sciences to native gods. Chaldæa, according to Berosus, was inhabited from time immemorial by a mixed multitude, and though Oannes brought letters and arts from the shores of the Persian Gulf, he taught them to a previously existing population. This is the more remarkable as the name of Accad and the form of the oldest Accadian hieroglyphics make it almost certain that they had migrated into Mesopotamia from the highlands of Kurdistan or of Central Asia. The Athenians also and other Greek tribes all claimed to be autochthonous, and their legends of men springing from the stones of Deucalion, and from the dragon's teeth of Cadmus, all point in the same direction. The great Aryan races also have no trustworthy traditions of any ancient migrations from Asia into Europe, or _vice versâ_, and their languages seem to denote a common residence during the formation of the different dialects in those regions of Northern Europe and Southern Russia in which we find them living when we first catch sight of them. The only exception to this is in the record in the Zendavesta of successive migrations from the Pamer or Altai, down the Oxus and Jaxartes into Bactria, and from thence into Persia. But this is not found in the original portion of the Zendavesta, and only in later commentaries on it, and is very probably a legend introduced to exemplify the constant warfare between Ormuzd and Ahriman. The Hindoo Vedas contain no history, and the inference that the Aryans lived in the Punjaub when the Rig-Veda was composed, and conquered Hindostan later, is derived from the references contained in the oldest hymns which point