Excerpt from Ceres and Persephone Demeter (ceres) is the goddess then at first, of the fertility of the earth in its wildness, i' i' afterward s ecially the goddess of agriculture 0 the fertility of the earth when furthered by human skill, and is the preserver of seed sown in hope. Demeter haunts the fields in spring when the young lambs are dropped; she visits the barns in autumn; she takes part in mowing and binding up the corn and is the goddess of sheaves. She presides over the threshing floor and full granary and stands beside the women baking bread at the oven, and it is they who leave her a fragment of bread and a morsel of meat at the cross-roads, to take on her journey. She lays a finger on the grass, and some new flower comes up. The country woman who puts her child to sleep in the great cradle-like basket for winnowing corn, remembers De meter, the mother of corn and children alike, and makes it a little coat out ofthe dress worn by its father at his initia tion into her mysteries. Per sephone, springin up with great joy from the couch o Hades to return to her mother, is the outburst of the year. The perfume of spring flowers hangs about her as about the actual spring. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.