As a rule unnamed wild animals may be supposed to have been protected. The fox was considered a powerful daeva-scarer, which shows that not only in China did the fox seem an “uncanny” beast. In Iran his supernatural services made him highly esteemed. There seem to have been no cats though so many mice. The later Iran was destined to be a great admirer of cats, witness the praise of them by Persian poets, but it is not easy to fix the date when they were introduced. Monkeys were known and were attributed by a post-Avestic superstition to the union of human women and daevas. Vultures were sacred because they devoured good Mazdeans. On the whole, not much attention was paid to wild nature, with one striking exception: the extraordinary respect for the water-dog, beaver or otter. Suddenly the solid utilitarian basis of Zoroastrian zoology gives way and we behold a fabric of dreams. We might understand it better could we know the early animistic beliefs of Iran, though the trend of the Avesta apparently ran _counter_ to old popular credences far more than with them. It should be remembered that water was only a little less sacred than fire in the Zoroastrian system; the defilement of rivers was strictly forbidden. The Udra, or beaver, became the “luck” of the rivers: to destroy it would provoke a drought. If it was found roaming on the land, the Mazdean was bound to carry it to the nearest stream. In later legend, the Udra, even more than the fox, was a daeva-foe. But by far its most important characteristic is its mythical connexion with the dog. To the question: “What becomes of the aged dog when his strength fails him and he dies?” follows the answer: “He goes to the dwelling in the water, where he is met by two water-dogs.” These are his conductors to the dogs’ paradise. A fair sward beneath the waters, cool and fresh in the summer heat, is at least a pleasant idea, but when the two water-dogs are described as consisting of one thousand male and one thousand female dogs, the myth seems to lose its balance which no proper myth ought to do. Myths have the habit of proceeding rationally enough in their own orbit. Later commentators reject this fantastic interpretation and suppose the verse to mean that the dog-soul is received, not by two, but by two thousand water-dogs, which in Oriental hyperbole would mean merely “a great many.”