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pardonably excessive zeal of its early friends. Since then the pruning knife has kept busy. At the present time this is a subject that should be handled very gingerly by all those who do not know how to winnow the chaff from the grain. But there still is Comparative Mythology, and it is here to stay.

There is yet another difficulty which should be rated at its right value, not too much and not too little. The primary object of the comparative mythology of the Indo-European peoples is to collect, compare, and sift the religious beliefs of these peoples, so as to determine what they owned as common property before their separation. What now, we hear it frequently asked, about the strange peoples, not Indo-European, nor Aryan, who share these beliefs with the Indo-Europeans or have similar beliefs? Without question, in the earlier stages of the science, similarities which were independent products in different quarters, due to the similar endowment of the human mind, were confused with genetic similarities. By genetic similarities I mean such similarities as transmitted mythological conceptions which were already in vogue among the prehistoric Indo-Europeans, so that they were continued, with later modifications, by the separate branches of the Indo-European peoples. Should not, therefore, this entire subject be handed over to those broader students of Ethnology