These verses clearly unfold the minds of the women who woo the spirits for the joys of motherhood. May not the corresponding faith of Indian women in sanctified waters be traced to similar ideas? The Bombay and Orissa practices described above do not materially support that view, but the Punjab practice and the belief of the Punjabis that the well runs dry after the bath and that its fertilizing virtue is abstracted by the women bathing in it are very significant. The Jews also believed in the possibility of conception occurring in a bath _in quo spermatizaverat homo_. Ben Sira was said to have been the son of a daughter of Jeremiah who became _enceinte_ from her father in that way. “Indeed,” says Dr. Feldman, “the Rabbi who expressed himself as a believer in such an occurrence was Simon ben Zoma, a sage of the second century A.D., who devoted a good deal of his time to metaphysical problems, and whose mind gave way in consequence. The question that was asked of him, no doubt sarcastically, was whether the High Priest, who may only marry a virgin, was allowed to marry a pregnant virgin. Ben Zoma answered the question in the affirmative, because, said he, conception was possible in a bath in which a man had just before washed himself.”[32] This theory, observes Dr. Feldman, was still in vogue even among physicians of the twelfth century. Averroes, an Arabian physician who died in 1198, records that an acquaintance of his, whose _bona fide_ was beyond dispute, stated on her oath that _impregnata fuerat subito in balneo lavelti aquæ calidæ in quo spermatizaverunt mali homines cum essent balneati in illo balneo_. Another author explains the possibility of such an occurrence as follows: _Quia vulva trahit sperma propter suam propriam virtutem_. “In the sixteenth century,” continues Dr. Feldman, “we find the Portuguese Amatus Lusitanus (1550) making use of the same theory to explain the delivery of a mole by a nun; and, according to Stern, this belief is prevalent in Turkey even at the present day. The Rabbis of the Middle Ages also believed in such a possibility. Even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century this belief prevailed, and R. Juda Rozanes, Rabbi of Constantinople, who, on the authority of Maimonides, considered such an occurrence improbable, was reprimanded by Azulai.” In Scotland persons who bore the name of the river Tweed were supposed to have as ancestors the genii of the river of that name. Could this curious belief have sprung from similar ideas concerning the procreative powers of the water-spirits?