They said, “So-and-so is going to die, his shadow is very small”; or, “He is in good health, his shadow is large.”(294) Similarly the Caffres of South Africa think that a man’s shadow grows very small or vanishes at death. When her husband is away at the wars, a woman hangs up his sleeping-mat; if the shadow grows less, she says her husband is killed; if it remains unchanged, she says he is unscathed.(295) It is possible that even in lands outside the tropics the observation of the diminished shadow at noon may have contributed, even if it did not give rise, to the superstitious dread with which that hour has been viewed by many peoples, as by the Greeks, ancient and modern, the Bretons, the Russians, the Roumanians of Transylvania, and the Indians of Santiago Tepehuacan.(296) In this observation, too, we may perhaps detect the reason why noon was chosen by the Greeks as the hour for sacrificing to the shadowless dead.(297) The loss of the shadow, real or apparent, has often been regarded as a cause or precursor of death. Whoever entered the sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia was believed to lose his shadow and to die within the year.(298) In Lower Austria on the evening of St. Sylvester’s day—the last day of the year—the company seated round the table mark whose shadow is not cast on the wall, and believe that the seemingly shadowless person will die next year. Similar presages are drawn in Germany both on St. Sylvester’s day and on Christmas Eve.(299) The Galelareese fancy that if a child resembles his father, they will not both live long; for the child has taken away his father’s likeness or shadow, and consequently the father must soon die.(300) Similarly among some tribes of the Lower Congo, “if the child is like its mother, father, or uncle, they think it has the spirit of the person it resembles, and that that person will soon die. Hence a parent will resent it if you say that the baby is like him or her.”(301)