To me indeed it had seemed probable, even before the publication of Mr. Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, that the cleansing of the penus Vestae was nothing but a survival of a general purification of store-houses, barns, utensils, and probably of all the apparatus of farming, including perhaps human beings, before the completion of the harvest which was now close at hand. The date of the Vestalia is indeed too early to let us suppose it to have been a real harvest festival, nor had it any of the joyous character found in such rites; and, as we shall see, the true harvest festivals are to be found in the month of August. The corn harvest in middle Italy took place in the latter half of June and in July[620]; and, as is everywhere still the practice, the festivals proper did not occur until the whole work of harvesting was done. But at the time of the Vestalia the crops were certainly ripening; in May we have already had the plucking of the first ears by the Vestals, and the _lustratio segetum_ which has been described under the head of Ambarvalia on May 28. I must leave to anthropologists the further investigation of the ideas underlying the ritual we have been examining; it is something to have been able to co-ordinate it with rites which are so well attested as those of the Creek Indians, and which admit without difficulty of a reasonable interpretation[621]. III ID. IUN. (JUNE 11). N. MAT[RALIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.) MATR[I] MATUT[AE]. (VEN.) MATRALIA. (PHILOC.)