which are the apples that the gods must bite when they grow old, in order to become young again.”[264] In the above description the various denizens of the tree have been supposed to symbolise natural phenomena. The stags who bite the buds are the four cardinal winds; the eagle and the hawk represent respectively the air and the wind-still ether; the serpent Nidhug who gnaws the root in the subterranean abyss symbolises volcanic forces, and the squirrel, who runs up and down the tree, hail and other atmospheric phenomena. [Illustration: Fig. 27.—Yggdrasil—the Scandinavian world-tree.(From Finn Magnusen’s Eddalaeren.)] A similar if somewhat less detailed symbolism is met with in both the Indian and Persian traditions of the world-tree, a symbolism which often obscures and overshadows its cosmic function. In both countries the mythical tree was venerated rather as a tree of life, the source of the immortalising soma or haoma, than as the supporter of the universe. The latter function was not indeed quite lost sight of, for the Kalpadruma of the Vedas was a cloud-tree of colossal size, which grew on a steep mountain, and by its shadow produced day and night before the creation of the sun and moon; and in the Rig-Veda Brahma himself is described as the vast over-spreading tree of the universe, of which the gods are the branches. Similarly in Persian legend, near the haoma-tree stood the tree of all seeds, frequented by two birds, one of which when he settled on it broke off a thousand branches and caused their seeds to fall, while the other carried them to a place whence they might be conveyed to the earth with the rain. The same idea, even to the two birds, recurs in the Indian traditions of the mystical soma-tree, which, besides producing the immortalising drink, also bore fruit and seed of every kind. It was from this tree that the immortals shaped the heaven and the earth: it grew in the third heaven, overshadowing it with its branches. Beneath it sat the gods, quaffing the precious soma, whereby they preserved their immortality.