A similar custom is observed by the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Roumanians.(53) In such customs the leaf-dressed girl represents the spirit of vegetation, and drenching her with water is an imitation of rain. In Russia, in the Government of Kursk, when rain is much wanted, the women seize a passing stranger and throw him into the river, or souse him from head to foot.(54) Later on we shall see that a passing stranger is often, as here, taken for a god or spirit. Amongst the Minahassa of North Celebes the priest bathes as a rain-charm.(55) In the Caucasian Province of Georgia, when a drought has lasted long, marriageable girls are yoked in couples with an ox-yoke on their shoulders, a priest holds the reins, and thus harnessed they wade through rivers, puddles, and marshes, praying, screaming, weeping, and laughing.(56) In a district of Transylvania, when the ground is parched with drought, some girls strip themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also naked, they steal a harrow and carry it across the field to a brook, where they set it afloat. Next they sit on the harrow and keep a tiny flame burning on each corner of it for an hour. Then they leave the harrow in the water and go home.(57) A similar rain-charm is resorted to in India; naked women drag a plough across the field by night.(58) It is not said that they plunge the plough into a stream or sprinkle it with water. But the charm would hardly be complete without it. Sometimes the charm works through an animal. To procure rain the Peruvians used to set a black sheep in a field, poured _chica_ over it, and gave it nothing to eat till rain fell.(59) In a district of Sumatra all the women of the village, scantily clad, go to the river, wade into it, and splash each other with the water. A black cat is thrown into the water and made to swim about for a while, then allowed to escape to the bank, pursued by the splashing of the women.(60) In these cases the colour of the animal is part of the charm; being black it will darken the sky with rain-clouds. So the Bechuanas burn the stomach of an ox at evening, because they say, “the black smoke will gather the clouds, and cause the rain to come.”(61) The Timorese sacrifice a black pig for rain, a white or red one for sunshine.(62) The Garos offer a black goat on the top of a very high mountain in time of drought.(63)