of flowers, which they watered and
tended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but
as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the
eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and
thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The "gardens" of Adonis
became the type of transient loveliness and swift decay.

* * * * *

"What waste would it be," says Plutarch,[9] "what inconceivable waste,
for God to create man, had he not an immortal soul. He would be like the
women who make little gardens, not less pleasant than the gardens of
Adonis in earthen pots and pans; so would our souls blossom and flourish
but for a day in a soft and tender body of flesh without any firm and
solid root of life, and then be blasted and put out in a moment."

Celebrated at midsummer as they were, and as the "gardens" were thrown
into water, it is probable that the rites of Adonis may have been, at
least in part, a rain-charm. In the long summer droughts of Palestine
and Babylonia the longing for rain must often have been intense enough
to provoke expression, and we remember (p. 19) that the Sumerian Tammuz
was originally _Dumuzi-absu_, "True Son of the Waters." Water is the
first need for vegetation. Gardens of Adonis are still in use in the
Madras Presidency.[10] At the marriage of a Brahman "seeds of five or
nine sorts are mixed and sown in earthen pots which are made specially
for the purpose, and are filled with earth. Bride and bridegroom water
the seeds both morning and evening for four days; and on the fifth day
the seedlings are thrown, like the real gardens of Adonis, into a tank
or river."

Seasonal festivals with one and the same intent--the promotion of
fertility in plants, animals and man--may occur at almost any time of
the year. At midsummer, as we have seen, we may have rain-charms; in
autumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn and early winter
among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas,
for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in
from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas
festival to promote and protect the sun's heat at the winter solstice.
But in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art,
the festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is
the Spring Festival, and to that we must turn. The spri