Darwin, in a letter to Asa Gray, the American botanist, said that the sufferings of caterpillars and mice made him doubt the existence of “a beneficent and omnipotent Creator.” How often does doubt seem more religious than belief! The eschatology of the creatures deemed of darkness is not clear, but I believe there is no mention of their Fravashis: it is permissible to suppose, therefore, that, all along, they are rather appearances than realities: things that cannot feel, though Ahriman feels defeat in their destruction. For the rest, though Zoroaster treated wasps or mice much as Torquemada treated heretics, he made it no merit to torment them: he simply desired their extermination as every fruit-grower or farmer desires it to this day. Students of Zoroastrianism have been mystified by the seeming detachment of the dog from the other “good” animals and the separate jurisdiction designed for it. In my opinion this arose only from the fact that the dog was not a food-providing animal. Hence it could be made penal (by religious, not by civil, law, it must be remembered) to kill a dog, and it was natural that his body should be disposed of in the same way as a man’s. What else could be done with it? It was natural also that since his death was inflicted by Ahriman (since it came of itself), purification ceremonials should be performed to remove the pollution. The religious scope of such ceremonials was like that of reconsecrating a church in which suicide or murder has been committed. That the dog was highly appreciated, that he was valued as an essential helper in the existing conditions of life, is amply proved, but that he was “reverenced” more than some other animals—_e.g._, the cow—is open to doubt. The dog was recognised as more human which made him more liable to err. It was the celebrated chapter on the dog which convinced Sir W. Jones that Anquetil Duperron’s translation was a forgery. It should have struck him that this was not how a European would have made Zoroaster speak about the favoured animal. In the comparisons of canine qualities with those of certain human beings, there is more of satire than of panegyric. The whole Fargard XIII. has been interpreted as purely mystical: the dog symbolising the “will,” a meaning which, according to this argument, fits the term “Dog” in all passages of the scriptures of Iran. This is a hard saying. More reasonable is the supposition that Fargard XIII. formed part of a treatise on animals and got into the Vendîdâd by chance. However that may be, the “eight characters” of the dog show observation though not reverence: he loves darkness like a thief, and at times has been known to be one; he fawns like a slave, he is a self-seeker like a courtezan, he eats raw meat like a beast of prey. The words relative to his “chasing about the well-born cow” have been interpreted to mean that he chased her back home when she had strayed, but I seem to have seen dogs chasing about well-born cows from