That my fields are in such good condition
Is matter of joy to my husbandmen.
With lutes, and with drums beating,
We will invoke the Father of Husbandry,
And pray for sweet rain,
To increase the produce of our millet fields,
And to bless my men and their wives.

There were also sacrifices to the Father of War, whoever he may have
been; to the Spirits of Wind, Rain, and Fire; and even to a deity who
watched over the welfare of silkworms. Since those days, the number of
spiritual beings who receive worship from the Chinese, some in one part
of the empire, some in another, has increased enormously. A single
work, published in 1640, gives notices of no fewer than eight hundred
divinities.

Superstitions.--During the period under consideration, all kinds of
superstition prevailed; among others, that of referring to the rainbow.
The rainbow was believed by the vulgar to be an emanation from an
enormous oyster away in the great ocean which surrounded the world, i.e.
China. Philosophers held it to be the result of undue proportions in the
mixture of the two cosmogonical principles which when properly blended
produce the harmony of nature. By both parties it was considered to be
an inauspicious manifestation, and merely to point at it would produce a
sore on the hand.

Supernatural Manifestations.--Several events of a supernatural character
are recorded as having taken place under the Chou dynasty. In B.C. 756,
one of the feudal Dukes saw a vision of a yellow serpent which descended
from heaven and laid its head on the slope of a mountain. The Duke spoke