PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 149 



related in recent years by a woman, who believed her 

 sister to have been thus acted on. When the gaze 

 " has caused the girl to feel helpless and motionless, 

 the man sends his hot breath over her face, and if she 

 possesses no power of resistance the harm is done." 

 The man in the case referred to was a foreigner, " an 

 Italian, or. something like that," very dark, with black 

 eyes and hair. The victim was said to have seen him 

 only on that one occasion ; and the story was told as a 

 warning against letting girls, especially fair girls, have 

 any acquaintance with foreigners. 1 



Reviewing the rites arid beliefs here brought together, 

 it will be seen that no mention has been made, as in some 

 of the tales, of the power of the wind as the source of 

 fecundity in women, or of the sense of smell or hearing 

 as the channel of that fecundity. It was, however, held 

 in classic times that partridges were impregnated in 

 some such way ; for Pliny tells us that if the female only 

 stood opposite to the male, and the wind blew from 

 him towards her, or if he simply flew over her head, 

 or very often if she merely heard his voice, it would 

 be enough. 2 The belief was equally common, and not 

 merely used for a poetical. ornament by Vergil, but re- 

 peated without question as a literal fact by men of 

 lofty intellect and wide attainments like Pliny and 

 Augustine, that mares were, in Lusitania, as the 

 former asserts, or in Cappadocia, according to the 

 latter, fertilised by wind. 3 Mohammedan tradition 



1 F. L. ix, 83. 



2 Pliny, x.5i. He is only echoing Aristotle, Hist, Anim. v. 4. 

 Athenaeus (Detpnos. ix. 42) improves upon the statement by saying 

 that sight of the cock is enough. It appears that in France the belie( 

 lasted into the sixteenth century (Sebillot, F, L. France, iii. 169). 



8 Pliny, viii. 67 ; Aug. Civ. Dei. xxi. 5. 



