something which returns into itself: and the word as it exists in Teutonic languages, of which our word year is an example, is said to have its origin in the word yra, which means a ring in Swedish, and is perhaps connected with the Latin gyrus. Sect. 2.-Fixation of the Civil Year. THE year, considered as a recurring cycle of seasons and of general appearances, must attract the notice of man as soon as his attention and memory suffice to bind together the parts of a succession of the length of several years. But to make the same term imply a certain fixed number of days, we must know how many days the cycle of the seasons occupies; a knowledge which requires faculties and artifices beyond what we have already mentioned. For instance, men cannot reckon as far as any number at all approaching the number of days in the year, without possessing a system of numeral terms, and methods of practical numeration on which such a system of terms is always founded?. The South American Indians, the Koussa Caffres and Hottentots, and the natives of New Holland, all of whom are said to be unable to reckon further than the fingers of their hands and feets, cannot as we do, include, in their notion of a year, the fact of its consisting of 365 days. This fact is not 2 Arithm. in Encyc. Metrop. (by Dr. Peacock,) Art. 8. likely to be known to any nation except those which have advanced far beyond that which may be considered as the earliest scientific process which we can trace in the history of the human race, the formation of a method of designating the successive numbers to an indefinite extent, by means of names, framed according to the decimal, quinary, or vigenary scale. But even if we suppose men to have the habit of recording the passage of each day, and of counting the score thus recorded, it would be by no means easy for them to determine the exact number of days in which the cycle of the seasons recurs; for the indefiniteness of the appearances which mark the same season of the year, and the changes to which they are subject as the seasons are early or late, would leave much uncertainty respecting the duration of the year. They would not obtain any accuracy on this head, till they had attended for a considerable time to the motions and places of the sun; circumstances which require more precision of notice than the general facts of the degrees of heat and light. The motions of the sun, the succession of the places of his rising and setting at different times of the year, the greatest heights which he reaches, the proportion of the length of day and night, would all exhibit several cycles. The turning back of the sun, when he had reached his greatest distance to the south or to the north, as shown either by his rising or by his height at noon, would perhaps be the most observable of such circumstances. Accordingly the TроTаi neλiolo, the turnings of the sun, are used repeatedly by Hesiod as a mark from which he reckons the seasons of various employments. "Fifty days," he says, "after the turning of the sun, is a seasonable time for beginning a voyage'." The phenomena would be different in different climates, but the recurrence would be common to all. Any one of these kinds of phenomena, noted with moderate care for a year, would show what was the number of days of which a year consisted; and if several years were included in the interval through which the scrutiny extended, the knowledge of the length of the year so acquired would be proportionally more exact. Besides those notices of the sun, which offered exact indications of the seasons, other more indefinite natural occurrences were used; as the arrival of the swallow (xeλider) and the kite (iKriv). The birds, in Aristophanes's play of that name, mention it, as one of their offices, to mark the seasons; Hesiod similarly notices the cry of the crane as an indication of the departure of winter3. Among the Greeks the seasons were at first only summer and winter (θέρος and χειμών), the 4 Ηματα πεντήκοντα μετα τροπας ἠελίοιο Ες τέλος ἐλθόντος θέρεος. 5 ⚫ Ideler, i. 240. Op. et Dies, 661. latter including all the rainy and cold portion of the year. The winter was then subdivided into the Xev and cap, and the summer, less definitely, into θέρος and οπώρα. Tacitus says that the Germans knew neither the blessings nor the name of autumn, "Autumni perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur." Yet harvest, herbst, is certainly an old German word". In the same period in which the sun goes through his cycle of positions, the stars also go through a cycle of appearances belonging to them; and these appearances were perhaps employed at as early a period as those of the sun in determining the exact length of the year. Many of the groups of fixed stars are readily recognized, as exhibiting always the same configuration; and particular bright stars are singled out as objects of attention. These are observed, at particular seasons, to appear in the west after sunset; but it is noted that when they do this, they are found nearer and nearer to the sun every successive evening, and at last disappear in his light. It is observed also, that at a certain interval after this, they rise visibly before the dawn of day renders the stars invisible; and after they are seen to do this, they rise every day at a longer interval before the sun. The risings and settings of the stars under these circumstances, or under others which are easily recognized, were, in countries where the sky is usually clear, employed at an early period, to mark the Ideler, i. 243. VOL. I. K seasons of the year. Eschylus makes Prometheus mention this among the benefits of which he, the teacher of arts to the earliest race of men, was the communicator. Thus, for instance, the rising of the Pleiades in the evening was a mark of the approach of winter. The rising of the waters of the Nile in Egypt coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, which star the Egyptians called Sothis. Even without any artificial measure of time or position, it was not difficult to carry observations of this kind to such a degree of accuracy as to learn from them the number of days which compose the year; and to fix the precise season from the appearance of the stars. 7 Ουκ ἣν γαρ αυτοῖς οὔτε χείματος τέκμαρ, Prom. V. 454. Ideler (Chronol. i. 242) says that this rising of the Pleiades took place at a time of the year which corresponds to our 11th May, and the setting to the 20th October; but this does not agree with the forty days of their being “concealed,” which, from the context, must mean, I conceive, the interval between their setting and rising. Pliny, however, says, "Vergiliarum exortu æstas incipit, occasu hiems; semestri spatio intra se messes vindemiasque et omnium maturitatem complexæ. (H. N. xviii. 69.) The autumn of the Grecks, oropa, was earlier than our autumn, for Homer calls Sirius d'orηp onwpivós, which rose at the end of July. |