“Well, fair youth,” replies the tree, “I have always been here. What is the reason that you have sought me?” “The reason I have sought you is that I have heard you suffer from _incontinentia urinae_.” “So I do,” says the tree. “Will you marry me?” says the man. “That I will,” says the tree, “but first you must plight your troth and recite the usual confession of faith.” On that the man takes a rattan leaf and wraps it round the palm as a pledge of betrothal, after which he says the creed: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” The maidenly and orthodox scruples of the tree having thus been satisfied, he embraces it as his bride. At first he attaches only a small dish to the trunk to receive the juices which exude from the cut in the bark; a large dish might frighten the tree. In fastening the dish to the palm he says, “_Bok-endang-reni!_ your child is languishing away for thirst. He asks you for a drink.” The tree replies, “Let him slake his thirst! Mother’s breasts are full to overflowing.”[359] We have already seen that in some parts of Northern India a mock marriage between two actors is performed in honour of a newly-planted orchard,[360] no doubt for the purpose of making it bear fruit. In the Nicobar Islands a pregnant woman is taken into the gardens in order to impart the blessing of fertility to the plants.[361] [Sidenote: In Uganda parents of twins are supposed to fertilise the plantains.] The Baganda of Central Africa believe so strongly in the intimate relation between the intercourse of the sexes and the fertility of the ground that among them a barren wife is generally sent away because she is supposed to prevent her husband’s garden from bearing fruit. On the contrary, a couple who have given proof of extraordinary fertility by becoming the parents of twins are believed by the Baganda to be endowed with a corresponding power of increasing the fruitfulness of the plantain-trees, which furnish them with their staple food. Some little time after the birth of the twins a ceremony is performed, the object of which clearly is to transmit the reproductive virtue of the parents to the plantains. The mother lies down on her back in the thick grass near the house and places a flower of the plantain between her legs; then her husband comes and knocks the flower away with his genital member. Further, the parents go through the country, performing dances in the gardens of favoured friends, apparently for the purpose of causing the plantain-trees to bear fruit more abundantly. The same belief in the fertilising power of such parents probably explains why in Uganda the father of twins is inviolable and may go into anybody’s garden and take the produce at will. To distinguish him from the common herd his hair is cut in a special way, and he wears little bells at his ankles which tinkle as he walks. His sacred character is further manifested by a rule which he must observe after the round of visits has