of discovery, and not so much chance of incurring the vengeance of their husbands." (Mariner's _Tonga Islands_, i. 116, ed. 1827.) The _Smithsonian Reports_, 1864, tell a story of an Indian who was sent by a missionary to a colleague with four loaves of bread, accompanied by a letter stating their number. The Indian ate one of the loaves, and was, of course, found out. He was sent on a similar errand and repeated the theft, but took the precaution to hide the letter under a stone while he was eating the bread, so that it might not see him! Barbaric ideas fall into fundamentally-related groups, and the examples just given are connected with the widespread belief in the efficacy of written characters to work black or white magic, to effect cures, and otherwise act as charms--a belief largely derived from the legends which ascribe the origin of writing to the gods--legends themselves the product of Ignorance, the mother of Mystery. In an Assyrian inscription, Sardanapalus V. speaks of the cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters as a revelation to his royal ancestors from the god Nebo; among the Egyptians, Thoth was the scribe of the gods, and their oldest forms of writing were named "the divine." Chinese tradition ascribes the invention of writing to the dragon-faced, four-eyed sage Ts'ang Chien, who saw in the stars of heaven, the footprints of birds, and the marks on the back of the tortoise, the models on which he formed the written characters. At this invention "heaven caused showers of grain to descend from on high; the disembodied spirits wept in the darkness, and the dragons withdrew themselves from sight." On the altars raised to Ts'ang Chien throughout the Celestial Land, every scrap of fugitive paper which has writing on it is burned in his honour. In Hindu legend, Brahma, the supreme god of the Indian Trinity, gives knowledge of letters to men; and Nâgari, in which alphabet the sacred books are written, is spoken of as "belonging to the city of the gods." The handwriting of Brahma, legend further says, is seen in the serrated sutures of men's skulls; and as Yahweh or Jehovah wrote the "Ten Words" with his own finger, so Brahma inscribed the holy texts of the Veda on leaves of gold. The story of the culture-hero, Cadmus, introducing the alphabet from Phœnicia into Greece is well known; while in Irish legend, Ogmios, the Gaelish Hercules, is familiar as the inventor of writing. But perhaps less familiar is that in the Northern Saga which attributes the invention of runes to Odin:-- "Thought-runes shalt thou deal with If thou wilt be of all men Fairest-souled, wight and wisest. These are ded, These first cut, These first took to heart high Hropt." (Odin.)