their only implement is a spade or hoe.(359) Of the Matabelé we are told that “most of the hard work is performed by the women; the whole of the cultivation is done by them. They plough with short spades of native manufacture; they sow the fields, and they clear them of weeds.”(360) Among the Awemba, to the west of Lake Tanganyika, the bulk of the work in the plantations falls on the women; in particular the men refuse to hoe the ground. They have a saying, “Is not each male child born for the axe and each female child for the hoe?”(361) (M86) The natives of the Tanganyika plateau “cultivate the banana, and have a curious custom connected with it. No man is permitted to sow; but when the hole is prepared a little girl is carried to the spot on a man’s shoulders. She first throws into the hole a sherd of broken pottery, and then scatters the seed over it.”(362) The reason of the latter practice has been explained by more recent observers of these natives. “Young children, it may here be noted, are often employed to administer drugs, remedies, even the Poison Ordeal, and to sow the first seeds. Such acts, the natives say, must be performed by chaste and innocent hands, lest a contaminated touch should destroy the potency of the medicine or of the seedlings planted. It used to be a very common sight upon the islands of Lake Bangweolo to watch how a Bisa woman would solve the problem of her own moral unfitness by carrying her baby-girl to the banana-plot, and inserting seedlings in the tiny hands for dropping into the holes already prepared.”(363) Similarly among the people of the Lower Congo “women must remain chaste while planting pumpkin and calabash seeds, they are not allowed to touch any pig-meat, and they must wash their hands before touching the seeds. If a woman does not observe all these rules, she must not plant the seeds, or the crop will be bad; she may make the holes, and her baby girl, or another who has obeyed the restrictions, can drop in the seeds and cover them over.”(364) We can now perhaps understand why Attic matrons had to observe strict chastity when they celebrated the festival of the Thesmophoria.(365) In Attica that festival was held in honour of Demeter in the month of Pyanepsion, corresponding to October,(366) the season of the autumn sowing; and the rites included certain ceremonies which bore directly on the quickening of the seed.(367) We may conjecture that the rule of chastity imposed on matrons at this festival was a relic of a time when they too, like many savage women down to the present time, discharged the important duty of sowing the seed and were bound for that reason to observe strict continence, lest any impurity on their part should defile the seed and prevent it from bearing fruit.