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Rh Childbirth. In the West Indies, a special divinity occupied with this function took rank as one of the great indigenous fetish-gods; in the Samoan group, the household god of the father's or mother's family was appealed to; in Peru the Moon takes to this office, and the same natural idea recurs in Mexico; in Esthonian religion the productive Earth-mother appropriately becomes patroness of human birth; in the classic theology of Greece and Italy, the divine spouse of the Heaven-king, Hēra, Juno, favours and protects on earth marriage and the birth of children; and to conclude the list, the Chinese work out the problem from the manes-worshipper's point of view, for the goddess whom they call 'Mother' and propitiate with many a ceremony and sacrifice to save and prosper their children, is held to have been in human life a skilful midwife.

The deity of Agriculture may be a cosmic being affecting the weather and the soil, or a mythic giver of plants and teacher of their cultivation and use. Thus among the Iroquois, Heno the Thunder, who rides through the heavens on the clouds, who splits the forest-trees with the thunderbolt-stones he hurls at his enemies, who gathers the clouds and pours out the warm rains, was fitly chosen as patron of husbandry, invoked at seed-time and harvest, and called Grandfather by his children the Indians. It is interesting to notice again on the southern continent the working out of this idea in the Tupan of Brazilian tribes; Thunder and Lightning, it is recorded, they call Tupan, considering themselves to owe to him their hoes and the profitable art of tillage, and therefore acknowledging him as a deity.