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1898-99. ] ; PRIMITIVE NATURE STUDY. 331 
be paralleled in the speech of hundreds of primitive tribes and they 
cover a wide range of thought and imagination. This is readily seen if 
we study for a moment the words for, say, “spring” and “winter” in 
certain American Indian languages. 
In the Nootka language, of Vancouver Island, “spring” is “the 
sprouting season’; with the Kootenays of South-eastern British Colum- 
bia, “the time when the snow leaves”; with the Ojibwa, of the region 
about the Great Lakes, “the time when the water is good (ze. for 
navigation).’ To the Nootkas “winter” is “the season when every- 
thing is clean” ; to the Kootenays it is the “time of snow and rain”; 
to the Athapascans the time when “the snow is on”; tothe Klamaths. 
of Oregon, “ the season of fogs.” The Nanticoke Indians of Virginia 
call summer “the great (long) light,” and autumn, “the little (short) 
light.” Some primitive peoples (eg., many of the tribes of North 
America) count their vears by wznters, while others (like the ancient 
Iranians, Hindus, Armenians, of our own race) count them by sasmers, 
both methods surviving with the poets who so often retain or re-coin the 
thought and word of primitive man. A volume might be written on 
the lore and symbolism of the seasons,—three sometimes, and not four, 
as with us and with other peoples in whose thought the winds of the 
cardinal points ruled the round of the year,—and the modifications which 
changing environment, social phenomena, and poetic imagination have 
brought about in their original designations. 
We, whose almost colorless month-names—since we abandoned the 
naive expressive terms of our Saxon forefathers—have been taken over 
bodily from Latin, do not possess, in this part of our vocabulary, the 
rich nature-feeling of the primitive races of men, who used all their art 
and skill in naming the various “moons” into which the cycle of the 
year was divided. Two only of the Roman month-names tell of nature- 
study —aAprilzs,“ the month of the opening earth,’ and J/aza, “the 
month of growing things,’—but the month-names of many of the lower 
races immortalize the greening earth, the singing, nesting and breeding 
of birds, the travels, rests and activities of animals, the blossoming of 
plants and the ripening of fruit, the murmur of the waters, the war of the 
elements, the fetters of snow and ice, the presence of the gods. 
Of the month-names of the Carrier (Déné) Indians of British Columbia 
five refer to the coming and going of fish (carp, salmon, trout, white- 
fish), while their neighbours, the Tsé’kehne, have commemorated the 
arrival of the golden eagle and the wild goose, the taking of the goslings 
to water, the coming of the black bear; the rutting of the buffalo, and 
