Passing from savage myths explanatory of the nature of celestial bodies to myths accounting for the formation and colour and habits of beasts, birds and fishes, we find ourselves, as an old Jesuit missionary says, in the midst of a barbarous version of Ovid's Metamorphoses. It has been shown that the possibility of interchange of form between man and beast is part of the working belief of everyday existence among the lower peoples. They regard all things as on one level, or, to use an old political phrase, they "level up" everything to equality with the human status. Thus Mr. Im Thurn, a very good observer, found that to the Indians of Guiana "all objects, animate or inaminate, seem exactly of the same nature, except that they differ by the accident of bodily form". Clearly to grasp this entirely natural conception of primitive man, the civilised student must make a great effort to forget for a time all that science has taught him of the differences between the objects which fill the world.(1) "To the ear of the savage, animals certainly seem to talk." "As far as the Indians of Guiana are concerned, I do not believe that they distinguish such beings as sun and moon, or such other natural phenomena as winds and storms, from men and other animals, from plants and other inanimate objects, or from any other objects whatsoever." Bancroft says about North American myths, "Beasts and birds and fishes fetch and carry, talk and act, in a way that leaves even Aesop's heroes quite in the shade".(2) (1) Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xi. 366-369. A very large and rich collection of testimonies as to metamorphosis will be found in J. G. Muller's Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 62 et seq.; while, for European superstitions, Bodin on La Demonomanie des Sorciers, Lyon, 1598, may be consulted. (2) Vol. iii. p. 127.