imagination of the race. Hence we may assign to the book of Job an extraordinary antiquity, and nevertheless it may have been written long ages after the events to which it refers occurred; and the writer may have clothed those events with the associations and conditions of the age of its composition. Let us, then, go forward to the other legends, for in such a case we can _prove_ nothing. We can simply build up cumulative probabilities. In Ovid we read that the Earth, when the dread affliction fell upon her, cried out: "O sovereign of the gods, if thou approvest of this, if I have deserved it, why do thy lightnings linger? . . . And dost thou give this as my recompense? This as the reward of my fertility and of my duty, in that _I endure wounds from the crooked plow and harrows_, and am harassed all the year through? In that I supply green leaves to the _cattle_, and _corn_, a wholesome food for mankind, and _frankincense_ for yourselves? " Here we see that Ovid received from the ancient traditions of his race the belief that when the Drift Age came man was already an agriculturist; he had invented the plow and the barrow; he had domesticated the cattle; he had discovered or developed some of the cereals; and he possessed a religion in which incense was burned before the god or gods. The legend of Phaëton further indicates that man had tamed the horse and had invented wheeled vehicles. In the Hindoo story of the coming of the demon Ravana, the comet, we read that he carried off Sita, the wife of Rama, the sun; and that her name indicates that she represented "the _furrowed earth_," to wit, a condition of development in which man plowed the fields and raised crops of food. When we turn to the Scandinavian legends, we see {p. 344} that those who transmitted them from the early ages believed that pre-glacial man was civilized. The Asas, the godlike, superior race, dwelt, we are told, "in stone houses." In describing, in the Elder Edda, the corrupt condition of mankind before the great catastrophe occurred, the world, we are told, was given over to all manner of sin and wickedness. We read: "Brothers will fight together, And become each other's bane Sisters' children Their sib shall spoil. Hard is the world; Sensual sins grow huge. There are _axe_-ages, _sword_-ages _Shields_ are cleft in twain, There are wind-ages, murder-ages, Ere the world falls dead."[1] When the great day of wrath comes, Heimdal blows in the Gjallar-_horn_, Odin _rides_ to Mimer's well, Odin puts on his _golden helmet_, the Asas hold counsel before their _stone doors_.