to a writer in Roscher's _Lexikon_ (Birt), who very properly notes (p. 1007) that "it is doubtful whether the belief that the moon influenced child-birth can be shown to be Italian." Birt, therefore, interprets the name to mean "the bright goddess," _i.e._, the goddess of bright daylight, and boldly writes it down as a matter of course that the first attribute of a daylight or sky goddess is her close relation to vegetable nature, especially woods and forests. Those who find this mortal leap beyond their power to follow, and who prefer to argue to the original nature of the goddess from what we know of her cult as a matter of fact, rather than from hypotheses as to the Nature-myths of the primitive Aryans, will note first that her name is as purely general and abstract as that of the Dea Dia or the Bona Dea, and means simply a bright spirit, or possibly simply a spirit. Next, wherever Diana was worshipped in Italy, she was originally worshipped in woods and groves, _e.g._, in the forests on Mount Tifata, Mount Algidus at Anagnia, Corne, and Aricia. Indeed, in Aricia the place of her worship was simply called _Nemus_, and the goddess herself plain _Nemorensis_. In the next place, her worship is frequently associated with that of Silvanus,[63] who is plainly a wood-spirit, and who is also a patron-spirit of domestic cattle.[64] From this we may venture to class her with the "agrestes feminæ quas silvaticas vocant" of Burchard of Worms:[65] she is a wood-spirit who became a goddess because of her likeness to the Greek Artemis. Her connection with child-birth does not indicate that she was a moon-goddess. Roman women in primitive times, like Swedish women, "twined their arms about a tree to ensure easy delivery in the pangs of child-birth; and we remember how, in our English ballads, women, in like time of need, 'set their backs against an oak.'"[66] Finally, the annual washing and cleansing of the head, which Plutarch mentions in _R. Q._ 100, was done on a day sacred to Diana, probably because, on the one hand, women felt that they were under her protection specially, while, on the other, so great is the sanctity of the head amongst primitive peoples,[67] that washing it is not to be undertaken lightly: "the guardian spirit of the head does not like to have the hair washed too often, it might injure or incommode him."[68]