CHAPTER II.
THE SEASONS.
The year is for us a numerical quantity of 365 or 366 days. But we speak of the year in two senses, first as the calendar year beginning on New Year’s Day, and secondly as the current year, a period of the same number of days beginning at one chosen day, as for instance in giving a person’s age. The word ‘year’ may however also represent the highest chronological unit even independently of the seasons, as in the case of the Egyptian shifting year of exactly 365 days, and the Islamite lunar year of 354. These however are exceptional cases. At the basis lies the natural year conditioned by the course of the sun and by the natural phases dependent thereon, which penetrate closely into the life of man. This connexion has necessitated the agreement of the numerical year with the sun, whence arises a situation very inconvenient for reckoning, namely that years of a varying number of days have to be accepted, since the natural year does not contain a whole number of days.
The year as a numerical quantity is only the tardily attained summit of development, and the connexion with the natural year has always been so strongly felt that, except in certain cases such as the Egyptian and Islamite years, the chronological year has had to adjust itself accordingly. Here also we see the point of departure, the natural phenomena which are in the end dependent upon the course of the sun, such as the variation between heat and cold, verdure and snow, rainy season and drought, the blooming and withering of vegetation, between the different trade-winds or monsoons, between abundance and scarcity of food. With these and similar concrete phenomena the time-reckoning is from its origin bound up, and is at first discontinuous, i. e. it fixes the attention solely on the phenomena in question, and not on the year as a whole. The fusion of the various seasons into the circle of the year is arrived at only by degrees: the year is at first counted by the pars pro toto method. The process is therefore similar to that already found in the discussion of the day.
It must be granted as a premise to our investigation that when we speak of ‘seasons’ not only the larger divisions of the year are to be understood by the word—those which alone of all the natural epochs of the year are current among us to-day—but also smaller divisions which might perhaps be called seasonal points; for instance the times of cherry-blossoming and hop-picking are also seasons. Such short—often very short—seasons are not distinguished in any important feature from the longer: the difference only arises from the longer or shorter duration of the phenomena in question. The Hidatsa Indians describe any period thus marked by a natural occurrence, be it long or short, the hot season or the season of strawberries, by the same word, kadu, ‘season’, ‘time’ (of the occurrence), and the longer seasons include shorter[198].
We begin with these shorter seasons since they are more foreign to us: to primitive man however they are of extreme importance, since in the absence of a regular calendar they afford the only means he knows of determining the shortest periods of the natural year, in so far as they are connected with this. A time-determination of this nature is important not so much for giving the date of any occurrence as for establishing beforehand the time of certain occupations, e. g. sowing or a festival.
The classical instance is afforded by the peasants’ maxims of Hesiod. The cry of the migrating cranes shews the time of ploughing and sowing[199]. If one sows too late, the crop may still thrive if Zeus sends rain upon it on the third day after the cuckoo has called for the first time in the leaves of the oak (486). Before the appearance of the swallow, the messenger of spring, the vines should be pruned (568). But when the snail climbs up the plants there should be no more digging in the vineyards (571). When the thistle blossoms and the shrill note of the cicada is to be heard, summer has come, the goats are at their fattest, and the wine is at its best (582). The sea can be navigated when the fig-tree shews at the end of its branches leaves which are as big as the foot-prints of the crow (679). Especially well-known and beloved as a sign that the hard winter was over was the swallow: evidence is afforded by the famous procession of the Rhodian swallow-youths[200], and by a vase-decoration clearly expressing the delight felt at the appearance of the herald of Spring[201]. The observation of the birds of passage was very useful for this kind of time-determination: Homer already knows it, ‘when the cranes flee the winter’, he says[202], so also Theognis: “I hear, son of Polypais, the voice of the shrill-crying crane, even her who to mortals comes as harbinger of the season for ploughing”[203]. Aristophanes makes his birds boast of it:—
“All lessons of primary daily concern
You have learnt from the Birds, and continue to learn.
Your best benefactors, and early instructors,