contributions to myth-literature. It is but fair to say that
ethnological considerations formed no part of the undertaking
which has resulted in the publication of this volume. Professor
J. W. Powell, of the Smithsonian Institution, who is engaged in
an investigation of the mythology of the North American Indians,
informs me that some of Uncle Remus's stories appear in a number
of different languages, and in various modified forms, among the
Indians; and he is of the opinion that they are borrowed by the
negroes from the red-men. But this, to say the least, is
extremely doubtful, since another investigator (Mr. Herbert H.
Smith, author of Brazil and the Amazons) has met with some of
these stories among tribes of South American Indians, and one in
particular he has traced to India, and as far east as Siam. Mr.
Smith has been kind enough to send me the proof-sheets of his
chapter on The Myths and Folk-Lore of the Amazonian Indians, in
which he reproduces some of the stories which he gathered while
exploring the Amazons.

In the first of his series, a tortoise falls from a tree upon the
head of a jaguar and kills him; in one of Uncle Remus's stories,
the terrapin falls from a shelf in Miss Meadows's house and stuns
the fox, so that the latter fails to catch the rabbit. In the
next, a jaguar catches a tortoise by the hind-leg as he is
disappearing in his hole; but the tortoise convinces him he is
holding a root, and so escapes; Uncle Remus tells how the fox
endeavored to drown the terrapin, but turned him loose because
the terrapin declared his tail to be only a stump-root. Mr. Smith
also gives the story of how the tortoise outran the deer, which
is identical as to incident with Uncle Remus's story of how Brer
Tarrypin outran Brer Rabbit. Then there is the story of how the