The Tengus of Japanese legend have many of the characteristic marks of the wood-spirit. They dwell in the topmost branches of lofty trees, are skilled in the language and lore of animals and plants, and are a terror to untruthful children. They have the body of a man, the head of a hawk, with a long proboscis, and powerful claws on their hands; on their feet, also provided with claws, are stilt-like clogs a foot high. They are hatched from eggs, and in their youth have feathers and wings.[150] A traveller in Peru only sixty years ago found the tradition of a living wood-ghost, who dwelt in the darkest part of the forest, the haunt of night-birds, and issued forth to decoy the Indians to their destruction.[151] The idea of a wild man of the woods also exists in Brazil. The Indians call him Curupira, and attribute to his agency all such forest sounds as they cannot understand.[152] Some of the foregoing traditions present a glimpse of the transition towards a later and more highly developed conception, in which the many spirits once believed in become generalised into a single “spirit of vegetation.” It is not indeed contended that this belief is necessarily destructive of the earlier. Indeed it is possible that in the loosely working mind of the peasant the two conceptions may exist side by side. The many interesting ceremonies and observances which arose out of this generalised conception will be dealt with in a later chapter. CHAPTER IV THE TREE IN ITS RELATION TO HUMAN LIFE Having dealt with the Tree in its connection on the one hand with gods, and on the other with spirits of more equivocal attributes, we have now to consider a series of myths and traditions wherein it was regarded as entering into a still more intimate relationship with man. Sometimes it was represented as the source from which the human race originally sprang, sometimes, conversely, as the object into which the soul might retreat after death, or into which an individual might be transmuted, body and soul, by some miraculous agency. In other cases the life of a particular tree was held to be bound up with that of an individual or a community, and lastly, in a still larger conception, the tree came to be very widely regarded as the embodiment of the spirit of fertility, the especial patron of the field and flock.