"Suddenly there was a large house on top of a hill, wherein were six persons beautifully arrayed, but constantly quarrelling. Whence they came was not known. Thereupon [the god] Okikurumi came, and said: 'Oh, you bad hares! you wicked hares! Who should not know your origin? The children in the sky were pelting each other with snowballs, and the snowballs fell into this world of men. As it would have been a pity to waste heaven's snow, the snowballs were turned into hares, and those hares are you. You who live in this world of mine, this world of human beings, must be quiet. What is it that you are brawling about?' With these words, Okikurumi seized a fire-brand, and beat each of the six with it in turn. Thereupon all the hares ran away. This is the origin of the hare-god, and for this reason the body of the hare is white, because made of snow, while its ears, which are the part which was charred by the fire, are black" (471. 486). The Mayas of Yucatan have a legend of a town of hares under the earth (411. 179). In Germany we meet with the "Easter-Hare" (Oster-Hase). In many parts of that country the custom prevails at or about Easter-tide of hiding in the garden, or in the house, eggs, which, the children are told, have been laid by the "Easter-hare." Another curious term met with in northeastern Germany is "hare-bread" (Hasenbrod). In Quedlinburg this name is given to bread (previously placed there intentionally by the parents) picked up by children when out walking with their parents or elders. In Lüneburg it is applied to dry bread given a hungry child with an exhortation to patience. In the first case, the little one is told that the hare has lost it, and in the second, that it has been taken away from him. The name "hare-bread" is also given to bread brought home by the parents or elders, when returning from a journey, the children being told that it has been taken away from the hare. In the shadow-pictures made on the wall for the amusement of children the rabbit again appears, and the hare figures also in children's games. _Squirrel._ According to the belief of certain Indians of Vancouver Island, there once lived "a monstrous old woman with wolfish teeth, and finger-nails like claws." She used to entice away little children whom she afterwards ate up. One day a mother, who was about to lose her child thus, cried out to the spirits to save her child in any way or form. Her prayer was answered, and "The Great Good Father, looking down upon the Red Mother, pities her; lo! the child's soft brown skin turns to fur, and there slides from the ogress's grip, no child, but the happiest, liveliest, merriest little squirrel of all the West,--but bearing, as its descendants still bear, those four dark lines along the back that show where the cruel claws ploughed into it escaping" (396. III. 52-54).