"Ah!" exclaimed a Magdeburg peasant to a German professor, during a thunder-storm, as a vivid forked gleam shot to earth, "what a glorious snake was that!" And this resemblance did not escape the Greeks.
ἕλικες δ᾿ ἐκλάμπουσι στεροπῆς ζάπυροι.
δράκοντα πυρόνωτον, ὅς ἄπλατον ἀμφελικτὸς
ἕλικ᾿ ἐφρούρει, κτανών.
And according to Aristotle, ἑλικίαι are the lightnings, γραμμοειδῶς φερόμενοι.
It is so difficult for us to unlearn all we know of the nature of meteorological phenomena, so hard for us to look upon atmospheric changes as though we knew nothing of the laws that govern them, that we are disposed to treat such explanations of popular myths as I have given above, as fantastic and improbable.
But among the ancients all solutions of natural problems were tentative, and it is only after the failure of every attempt made to explain these phenomena on supernatural grounds that we have been driven to the discovery of the true interpretation. Yet among the vulgar a vast amount of mythology remains, and is used still to explain atmospheric mysteries. The other day a
