With Toyotama-hiko there is associated a fabulous animal called a _wani_, usually written with the Chinese character for crocodile. There can be little doubt that the _wani_ is really the Chinese dragon. It is frequently so represented in Japanese pictures. I have before me a print which shows Toyotama-hiko and his daughter with dragons' heads appearing over their human ones. This shows that he was conceived of not only as a Lord of Dragons, but as a dragon himself. His daughter, who in one version of the story changes at the moment of child-bearing into a _wani_ as her true form, in another is converted into a dragon. In Japanese myth the serpent or dragon is almost always associated with water in some of its forms. We also hear of a Shiho-tsuchi, or brine-father, and of local harbour deities. =River-Gods=.--The River Gods have no individual names. They are called generally _midzu-chi_, or water-father. Japanese dictionaries describe the _midzu-chi_ as an animal of the dragon species with four legs. Hepburn, in his 'Japanese-English Dictionary,' calls it a large water-snake. The difference is not material. The dragon-kings of Chinese myth (of whom Toyotama-hiko is an echo) are in India the Naga Raja, or cobra-kings. The conception of a stream as a snake, serpent, or dragon, or of one of these animals as the embodiment of a water-deity is widespread. Dennys, in his 'Folk-Lore of China,' quotes from the _North China Herald_ the following: "The River-God is in every case a small water-snake which popular fancy has converted into a deity." Robertson-Smith, in his 'Religion of the Semites,' says that "the living power that inhabits sacred waters and gives them their miraculous or healing quality is very often held to be a serpent, a huge dragon, or water monster." Reville tells us that "Le serpent joue en effet un grand rôle symbolique dans le culte de Tlaloc (the Mexican Rain and Water God) en tant qu'il represente l'eau qui coule, les nuages, les cours d'eau." It is easy to understand how a river, with its sinuous course and its mysterious movement without legs, should come to be thought of as a great serpent, especially if we remember the aquatic habits of some of the ophidia. Rivers have their favourable and their maleficent aspects. On the one hand they furnish water for irrigation, and on the other they cause destruction and loss of life by their floods, metaphorically expressed by the serpent's poison. The River-Gods are prayed to for rain in time of drought. We hear oftener of their sinister aspect. The Perseus and Andromeda incident related above is probably a trace of former human sacrifices to rivers, of which further evidence is afforded by the following extracts from the _Nihongi_:--