great destruction, followed by revival or reconstruction of the species, a tale by no means necessarily of Biblical origin. In examining savage myths of the origin of man and of the world, we shall begin by considering those current among the most backward peoples, where no hereditary or endowed priesthood has elaborated and improved the popular beliefs. The natives of Australia furnish us with myths of a purely popular type, the property, not of professional priests and poets, but of all the old men and full-grown warriors of the country. Here, as everywhere else, the student must be on his guard against accepting myths which are disguised forms of missionary teaching.(1) (1) Taplin, The Narrinyeri. "He must also beware of supposing that the Australians believe in a creator in our sense, because the Narrinyeri, for example, say that Nurundere 'made everything'. Nurundere is but an idealised wizard and hunter, with a rival of his species." This occurs in the first edition, but "making all things" is one idea, wizardry is another. In Southern Australia we learn that the Boonoorong, an Australian coast tribe, ascribe the creation of things to a being named Bun-jel or Pund-jel. He figures as the chief of an earlier supernatural class of existence, with human relationships; thus he "has a wife, WHOSE FACE HE HAS NEVER SEEN," brothers, a son, and so on. Now this name Bun-jel means "eagle-hawk," and the eagle-hawk is a totem among certain stocks. Thus, when we hear that Eagle-hawk is the maker of men and things we are reminded of the Bushman creator, Cagn, who now receives prayers of considerable beauty and pathos, but who is (in some theories) identified with kaggen, the mantis insect, a creative grasshopper, and the chief figure in Bushman mythology.(1) Bun-jel or Pund-jel also figures in Australian belief, neither as the creator nor as the eagle-hawk, but "as an old man who lives at the sources of the Yarra river, where he possesses great multitudes of cattle".(2) The term Bun-jel is also used, much like our "Mr.," to denote the older men of the Kurnai and Briakolung, some of whom have magical powers. One of them, Krawra, or "West Wind," can cause the wind to blow so violently as to prevent the natives from climbing trees; this man has semi-divine attributes. From these facts it appears that this Australian creator, in myth, partakes of the character of the totem or worshipful beast, and of that of the wizard or medicine-man. He carried a large knife, and, when he made the earth, he went up and down slicing it into creeks and valleys. The aborigines of the northern parts of Victoria seem to believe in Pund-jel in what may perhaps be his most primitive mythical shape, that of an eagle.(3) This eagle and a crow created everything, and separated the Murray blacks into their two main divisions, which derive their names from the crow and the eagle. The Melbourne blacks seem to make Pund-jel more anthropomorphic.