child-fountain of the Götterburg, would seem to be. In North Germany generally the storks are believed to be human beings in magical metamorphosis, and hence no harm must be done them. Between the household, upon whose roof the stork takes up his abode, and the family of the bird, a close relation is thought to subsist. If his young ones die, so will the children of the house; if no eggs are laid, no children will be born that year; if a stork is seen to light upon a house, it is regarded by the Wends of Lusatia as an indication that a child will be born there the same year; in Switzerland the peasant woman about to give birth to a child chants a brief appeal to the stork for aid. A great variety of domestic, meteorological, and other superstitions are connected with the bird, its actions, and mode of life. The common Low German name of the stork, _Adebar_, is said to mean "luck-bringer"; in Dutch, he is called _ole vaer,_ "old father." After him the wood-anemone is called in Low German _Hannoterblume,_ "stork's-flower." An interesting tale is "The Storks," in Hans Christian Andersen. _Bird-Language._ In the Golden Age, as the story runs, men were able to hold converse with the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, nor had a diversity of dialects yet sprung up among them. In Eden of old the whole world was of one tongue and one speech; nay more, men talked with the gods and with God. Many legends of primitive peoples there are telling how confusion first arose,--every continent has its Babel-myth,--and how men came at last to be unable to comprehend each other's speech. The Indians of Nova Scotia say that this occurred when Gluskap, the culture-hero of the Micmacs, after giving a parting banquet to all creatures of earth, sea, and air, "entered his canoe in the Basin of Minas, and, sailing westward in the moonlight, disappeared. Then the wolves, bears, and beavers, who had before been brothers, lost the gift of common language, and birds and beasts, hating one another, fled into the distant forests, where, to this day, the wolf howls and the loon utters its sad notes of woe" (418. 185). The Mexican legend of the deluge states that the vessel in which were Coxcox,--the Mexican Noah,--and his wife, Xochiquetzal, stranded on a peak of Colhuacan. To them were born fifteen sons, who, however, all came into the world dumb, but a dove gave them fifteen tongues, and thence are descended the fifteen languages and tribes of Anahuac (509. 517). In later ages, among other peoples, the knowledge of the forgotten speech of the lower creation was possessed by priests and seers alone, or ascribed to innocent little children,--some of the power and wisdom of the bygone Golden Age of the race is held yet to linger with the golden age of childhood. In the beautiful lines,-- "O du Kindermund, o du Kindermund, Unbewuszter Weisheit froh, Vogelsprachekund, vogelsprachekund, Wie Salamo!"