PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 39 



the creative heroines of the tribal mythology. He 

 received from the sun the secret of the medicine which 

 would make both the earth and women fruitful. Hence 

 the society bearing his name has charge of the 

 medicine and performs the rites necessary for both 

 purposes. 1 Among the Kansa, a Siouan tribe, a man 

 was reported as having had a red medicine, which was 

 used for women who desired to have children, for 

 horses and for causing good dreams ; but whether it 

 was to be taken internally does not appear. 2 In the 

 Lower Congo a barren woman goes to a nganga 

 ndembo, who takes certain leaves (the identity of 

 which is kept secret), squeezes their juice into palm- 

 wine and gives it to her to drink. 3 The Czech 

 women of Bohemia drink an infusion of juniper to 

 obtain children ; and coffee enjoys a high reputation 

 in Franconia. In China and Japan a medicine called 

 Kay-tu-sing, made from the leaves of a tree belonging 

 to the Ternstromacece, is given at full moon with 

 cabalistic formulae. In the Fiji Islands the woman 

 bathes in a stream, and then both husband and wife 

 take a drink made with the grated root of a kind of 

 bread-fruit tree and the nut of a sort of turmeric, 

 immediately before congress. Siberian brides before 

 the marriage-night eat the cooked fruit of the Iris 

 Sibirica. Asparagus seeds and young hop- buds pre- 

 pared as salad are given to women in Styria against 

 barrenness, They are then required to abstain from 

 conjugal relations for two months, and be bled, 

 before resuming them. Serb women get a woman 

 already pregnant to put yeast into their girdles ; they 



1 Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 113, 33, 71. 



2 Ibid. 418. 3 J. H. Weeks, F. L. xix. 419 



