excuse man on account of the object he pursues, and detest him for annoying them by disturbing the ground, what advantage then can he derive from selecting proper days for doing so?”(302) What advantage indeed? In that case the only logical conclusion is, with the Indian prophet, to forbid agriculture altogether, as an impious encroachment on the spiritual world. Few peoples, however, who have once contracted the habit of agriculture are willing to renounce it out of a regard for the higher powers; the utmost concession which they are willing to make to religion in the matter is to prohibit agricultural operations at certain times and seasons, when the exercise of them would be more than usually painful to the earth-spirits. Thus in Bengal the chief festival in honour of Mother Earth is held at the end of the hot season, when she is supposed to suffer from the impurity common to women, and during that time all ploughing, sowing, and other work cease.(303) On a certain day of the year, when offerings are made to the Earth, the Ewe farmer of West Africa will not hoe the ground, and the Ewe weaver will not drive a sharp stake into it, “because the hoe and the stake would wound the Earth and cause her pain.”(304) When Ratumaimbulu, the god who made fruit-trees to blossom and bear fruit, came once a year to Fiji, the people had to live very quietly for a month lest they should disturb him at his important work. During this time they might not plant nor build nor sail about nor go to war; indeed most kinds of work were forbidden. The priests announced the time of the god’s arrival and departure.(305) These periods of rest and quiet would seem to be the Indian and Fijian Lent. (M68) Thus behind the Greek notion that women may conceive by a serpent-god(306) seems to lie the belief that they can conceive by the dead in the form of serpents. If such a belief was ever held, it would be natural that barren women should resort to graves in order to have their wombs quickened, and this may explain why they visited the shrine of the serpent-god Aesculapius for that purpose; the shrine was perhaps at first a grave. It is significant that in Syria the shrines of St. George, to which childless women go to get offspring, always include a tomb or the likeness of one;(307) and further, that in the opinion of Syrian peasants at the present day women may, without intercourse with a living man, bear children to a dead husband, a dead saint, or a jinnee.(308) In the East Indies also it is still commonly believed that spirits can consort with women and beget children on them. The Olo Ngadjoe of Borneo imagine that albinoes are the offspring of the spirit of the moon by mortal women, the pallid hue of the human children naturally reflecting the pallor of their heavenly father.(309)