phases of plant-worship, a striking proof of its universality in days
gone by.[3]

According to Mr. Fergusson, tree-worship has sprung from a perception of
the beauty and utility of trees. "With all their poetry," he argues,
"and all their usefulness, we can hardly feel astonished that the
primitive races of mankind should have considered trees as the choicest
gifts of the gods to men, and should have believed that their spirits
still delighted to dwell among their branches, or spoke oracles through
the rustling of their leaves." But Mr. McLennan[4] does not consider
that this is conclusive, adding that such a view of the subject, "Does
not at all meet the case of the shrubs, creepers, marsh-plants, and
weeds that have been worshipped." He would rather connect it with
Totemism,[5] urging that the primitive stages of religious evolution go
to show that, "The ancient nations came, in pre-historic times, through
the Totem stage, having animals, and plants, and the heavenly bodies
conceived as animals, for gods before the anthropomorphic gods
appeared;" While Mr. Herbert Spencer[6] again considers that,
"Plant-worship, like the worship of idols and animals, is an aberrant
species of ancestor-worship--a species somewhat more disguised
externally, but having the same internal nature." Anyhow the subject is
one concerning which the comparative mythologist has, at different
times, drawn opposite theories; but of this there can be no doubt, that
plant-worship was a primitive faith of mankind, a fact in connection
with which we may quote Sir John Lubbock's words,[7] how, "By man in
this stage of progress everything was regarded as having life, and being
more or less a deity." Indeed, sacred rivers appear in the very earliest
mythologies which have been recovered, and lingered among the last
vestiges of heathenism long after the advent of a purer creed. As, too,
it has been remarked,[8] "Either as direct objects of worship, or as