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CHAPTER I. 

 EARLIEST STAGES OF ASTRONOMY 



Sect. 1. Formation of the Notion of a Year. 



THE notion of a Day is early and obviously 

 impressed upon man in almost any condition 

 in which we can imagine him. The recurrence of 

 light and darkness, of comparative warmth and 

 cold, of noise and silence, of the activity and repose 

 of animals ; the rising, mounting, descending, and 

 setting of the sun; the varying colours of the 

 clouds, generally, notwithstanding their variety, 

 marked by a daily progression of appearances ; 

 the calls of the desire of food and of sleep in man 

 himself, either exactly adjusted to the period of this 

 change, or at least readily capable of being accom- 

 modated to it ; the recurrence of these circum- 

 stances at intervals, equal, so far as our obvious 

 judgment of the passage of time can decide ; and 

 these intervals so short that the repetition is noticed 

 with no effort of attention or memory; this as- 

 semblage of suggestions makes the notion of a day 

 necessarily occur to man, if we suppose him to 



