of ideas which furnished us with our ancients and classics we are
familiar. The lovely presences in human form, the semi-human and bestial
creations, sphinxes, naiads, satyrs, fauns, harpies, griffins, with
which the fancy of the Mediterranean nations populated glen, grotto,
mountain and stream, are probably outnumbered by the less beautiful and
even hideous mind-shadows of the Turanian world. Chief among these are
what in Chinese literature, so slavishly borrowed by the Japanese, are
called the four supernatural or spiritually endowed creatures--the Kirin
or Unicorn, the Phoenix, the Tortoise and the Dragon.[15]


Mythical Zoölogy.


Of the first species the _ki_ is the male, the _lin_ is the female,
hence the name Kilin. The Japanese having no _l_, pronounce this Kirin.
Its appearance on the earth is regarded as a happy portent of the advent
of good government or the birth of men who are to prove virtuous rulers.
It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and a single, soft horn.
As messenger of mercy and benevolence, the Kirin never treads on a live
insect or eats growing grass. Later philosophy made this imaginary beast
the incarnation of those five primordial elements--earth, air, water,
fire and ether of which all things, including man's body, are made and
which are symbolized in the shapes of the cube, globe, pyramid, saucer
and tuft of rays in the Japanese gravestones. It is said to attain the
age of a thousand years, to be the noblest form of the animal creation
and the emblem of perfect good. In Chinese and Japanese art this
creature holds a prominent place, and in literature even more so. It is
not only part of the repertoire of the artist's symbols in the Chinese
world of ideas, but is almost a necessity to the moulds of thought in