Subject: What I learned today at the Boston Public Library

        Although we have the source of all things from chaos, it is a
        chaos which is simply the wreck and ruin of an earlier
        world....The drama of creation, according to The Hawaiian
        account, is divided into a series of stages, and in the very
        first of these life springs from the shadowy abyss and dark
        night...At first the lowly zoophytes and corals come into
        being, and these are followed by worms and shellfish, each
        type being declared to conquer and destroy its predecessor, a
        struggle for existence in which the strongest survive....As
        type follows type, the accumulating slime of their decay
        raises land above the waters, in which, as spectator of all,
        swims the octopus, the lone survivor of an earlier world.

        _Mythology of All Races_, vol. ix ("Oceanic"), R.B. Dixon.