PKIMITIVE MEASUREMENTS OF TIME. 165 



ficance in the remark which some have made, that alike 

 in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, there is an affinity be- 

 tween the word meaning moon, and that meaning measure. 



This fact, that in very early stages of social progress it 

 is known that the moon goes through her changes in about 

 thirty days, and that in about twelve moons the seasons 

 return — this fact that chronological astronomy assumes a 

 certain scientific character even before geometry does ; 

 while it is partly due to the circumstance that the astro- 

 nomical divisions, day, month, and year, are ready made 

 for us, is partly due to the further circumstances that 

 agricultural and other operations were at first regulated 

 astronomically, and that from the supposed divine nature 

 of the heavenly bodies their motions determined the 

 periodical religious festivals. As instances of the one we 

 have the observation of the Egyptians, that the rising of 

 the Nile corresponded with the heliacal rising of Sirius ; 

 the directions given by Hesiod for reaping and ploughing, 

 according to the positions of the Pleiades ; and his maxim 

 that '• fifty days after the turning of the sun is a seasonable 

 lime for beginning a voyage." As instances of the other, 

 we have the naming of the days after the sun, moon, and 

 planets ; the early attempts among Eastern nations to 

 regulate the calendar so that the gods might not be ofifend- 

 ed by the displacement of their sacrifices ; and the fix- 

 ing of the great annual festival of the Peruvians by the 

 position of the sun. In all which facts we see that, 

 at first, science was simply an apphance of religion and 

 industry. 



After the discoveries that a lunation occupies nearly 

 thirty days, and that some tw^elve lunations occupy a year 

 — discoveries of which there is no historical account, but 

 which may be inferred as the earliest, from the fact that 

 existing unciviHzed races have made them — we come to 

 the first known astronomical records, which are those of 



