As we do not know the destiny of the fifth, the present one, it has as yet no name.
I shall not attempt to go into the details of this myth, the less so as it has recently been analyzed with much minuteness by the Mexican antiquary Chavero.[1] I will merely point out that it is too closely identified with a great many similar myths for us to be allowed to seek an origin for it peculiar to Mexican or even American soil.

We can turn to the Tualati who live in Oregon, and they will tell us of the four creations and destructions of mankind; how at the end of the first Age all human beings were changed into stars; at the end of the second they became stones; at the end of the third into fishes; and at the close of the fourth they disappeared, to give place to the tribes that now inhabit the world.[2] Or we can read from the cuneiform inscriptions of ancient Babylon, and find the four destructions of the race there specified, as by a flood, by wild beasts, by famine and by pestilence.[3] [Footnote 1: Alfredo Chavero, _La Piedra del Sol_, in the _Anales del Museo Nacional_, Tom.

i, p.

353, et seq.] [Footnote 2: A.S.Gatschet, _The Four Creations of Mankind_, a Tualati myth, in _Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Washington_, Vol.
i, p.

60 (1881).] [Footnote 3: Paul Haupt, _Der Keilinschriftliche Sintfluthbericht_, p.