The serpent entered largely into the mythology of the ancient Persians, as it does into that of the Hindus. In India it is associated with both Siva-ism and Vishnuism, although its actual worship perhaps belonged rather to the aboriginal tribes among whom Buddhism is thought by recent writers to have originated. The modern home of the superstition, however, is Western Africa, where the serpent is not merely considered sacred, but is actually worshipped as divine. On the other side of the Indian Ocean traces of the same superstition are met with among the peoples of the Indian islands and of Polynesia, and also in China. The evidences of serpent-worship on the American Continent have long engaged the attention of archæologists, who have found it to be almost universal, under one form or another, among the aboriginal tribes. That animal was sculptured on the temples of Mexico and Peru, and its form is said by Mr. Squier to be of frequent occurrence among the mounds of Wisconsin. The most remarkable of the symbolic earthworks of North America is the great serpent mound of Adam’s county, Ohio, the convolutions of which extend to a length of 1,000 feet. At the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association, in 1871, Mr. Phené gave an account of his discovery in Argyllshire of a similar mound several hundred feet long, and about fifteen feet high by thirty feet broad, tapering gradually to the tail, the head being surmounted by a circular cairn, which he supposes to answer to the solar disc above the head of the Egyptian uræus, the position of which, with head erect, answers to the form of the Oban serpent-mound. This discovery is of great interest, and its author is probably justified in assuming that the mound was connected with serpent-worship. It may be remarked, in evidence of the existence of such structures in other parts of the old world, that the hero of one of the Yaçnas of the Zend Avesta is made to rest on what he thinks is a bank, but which he finds to be a great green snake, doubtless a serpent-mound. Another ancient reference to these structures is made by Iphicrates, who, according to Bryant, “related that in Mauritania there were dragons of such extent, that grass grew upon their backs.”