saying, “Grow and turn green! You have nothing else to do.” He hoped that the flax would grow as high as he flung the seed-bag in the air. At Quellendorff, in Anhalt, the first bushel of seed-corn had to be heaped up high in order that the corn-stalks should grow tall and bear plenty of grain.​[471] When Macedonian farmers have done digging their fields, they throw their spades up into the air, and catching them again, exclaim, “May the crop grow as high as the spade has gone!”​[472] [Sidenote: Plants and trees influenced homoeopathically by a person’s act or state. Fertilising influence supposed to be exercised on plants by pregnant women or by women who have borne many children. Barren women supposed to make the fruit-trees barren.] The notion that a person can influence a plant homoeopathically by his act or condition comes out clearly in a remark made by a Malay woman. Being asked why she stripped the upper part of her body naked in reaping the rice, she explained that she did it to make the rice-husks {p140} thinner, as she was tired of pounding thick-husked rice.​[473] Clearly, she thought that the less clothing she wore the less husk there would be on the rice. Among the Minangkabauers of Sumatra, when a rice barn has been built a feast is held, of which a woman far advanced in pregnancy must partake. Her condition will obviously help the rice to be fruitful and multiply.​[474] Among the Zulus a pregnant woman sometimes grinds corn, which is afterwards burnt among the half-grown crops in order to fertilise them.​[475] For a similar reason in Syria when a fruit-tree does not bear, the gardener gets a pregnant woman to fasten a stone to one of its branches; then the tree will be sure to bear fruit, but the woman will run a risk of miscarriage,​[476] having transferred her fertility, or part of it, to the tree. The practice of loading with stones a tree which casts its fruit is mentioned by Maimonides,​[477] though the Rabbis apparently did not understand it. The proceeding was most probably a homoeopathic charm designed to load the tree with fruit.​[478] In Swabia they say that if a fruit-tree does not bear, you should keep it loaded with a heavy stone all summer, and next year it will be sure to bear.​[479] The custom of tying stones to fruit-trees in order to ensure a crop of fruit is followed also in Sicily.​[480] The magic virtue of a pregnant woman to communicate fertility is known to Bavarian and Austrian peasants, who {p141} think that if you give the first fruit of a tree to a woman with child to eat, the tree will bring forth abundantly next year.​[481] In Bohemia for a similar purpose the first apple of a young tree is sometimes plucked and eaten by a woman who has borne many children, for then the tree will be sure to bear many apples.​[482] In the Zürcher Oberland, Switzerland, they think that a cherry-tree will bear abundantly if its first fruit is eaten by a woman who has just given birth to her first