Note 357 — Chapter XI · THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEXES ON VEGETATION

Maimonides, translated by D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 475. It is not quite clear whether the direction, which Maimonides here attributes to the heathen of Harran, is taken by him from the beginning of The Agriculture of the Nabataeans, which he had referred to a few lines before. The first part of that work appears to be lost, though other parts of it exist in manuscript at Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere. See D. Chwolsohn, op. cit. i. 697 sqq. The book is an early Mohammedan forgery; but the superstitions it describes may very well be genuine. See A. von Gutschmid, Kleine Schriften, ii. 568-713.