eiiap. V. ANTIENTMETAPHYSICS. 147 



which, by a wonderful application of the element of fire, they made 

 a variety of things both of ornament and ufe. Before this difco- 

 very, men, for the purpofe of cutting and piercing, ufed the hardeft 

 flones they could find, fuch as flints ; and the barbarous nations at 

 this day head their arrows with flints, which was the practice in 

 Scotland in antient times as well as in other countries ; and I have 

 myfelf a flint head of an arrow, found in the Pentland Hills near 

 Edinburgh. 



For carrying on the bufinefs of civil life, and particularly of ag« 

 riculture, the obfervance of times and feafons Is neceflTary, and for 

 that purpofe the divifion of time into certain portions. The mofl: 

 obvious divifion, and no doubt the firft that was made by men, is 

 into dajs ; that is the interval of time from the rifing of the fun 

 in one day, to his rifing again the next day ; which we divide into 

 twenty- four parts called hours. But a greater divifion of time was 

 neceflary for the bufinefs of life : And therefore the next divifion of 

 it, made by man, was by the motions of the moon, containing 

 that fpace of time betwixt the one new moon and the other ; 

 which we call a t?ionih : And the barbarous nations appear to 

 have gone no farther, than to divide their time by months 

 and by feafons; for none of them, unlefs they have learned it 

 from us, know that divifion of time we call a year. This fo impor- 

 tant divifion, without which we could have had no chronology of 

 any extent of time, was firfl: invented by the Egyptians, as Hero- 

 dotus has told us *. They difcovered that the courfe of the fun round 

 the eaith, or, what is the fame thing, of the earth round the fun, is 

 performed in 365 days and 6 hours, which hours every fourth year 

 make a day more, that was added to that year; And here we are to 

 obferve, that though the Egyptians did not lay afide the divifion of 

 time into months, it was act lunar months, but months fuch as we 



T 2 ufe, 



* Lib. 2. chap. 4. 



