EARLIEST STAGES OF ASTRONOMY. 125 



rence, and at the same interval in all, the recur- 

 ring appearances would be extremely different in 

 different countries ; and the contrasts and resem- 

 blances of the seasons would be widely varied. In 

 some places the winter utterly alters the face of 

 the country, converting grassy hills, deep, leafy 

 woods of various hues of green, and running waters, 

 into snowy and icy wastes, and bare snow-laden 

 branches; while in others, the field retains its 

 herbage, and the tree its leaves, all the year ; and 

 the rains and the sunshine alone, or various agricul- 

 tural employments quite different from ours, mark 

 the passing seasons. Yet in all parts of the world 

 the yearly cycle of changes has been singled out 

 from all others, and designated by a peculiar name. 

 The inhabitant of the equatorial regions has the 

 sun vertically over him at the end of every period 

 of six months, and similar trains of celestial pheno- 

 mena fill up each of these intervals, yet we do not 

 find years of six months among such nations. The 

 Arabs alone 1 , who practise neither agriculture nor 

 navigation, have a year depending upon the moon 

 only ; and borrow the word from other languages, 

 when they speak of the solar year. 



In general nations have marked this portion 

 of time by some word which has a reference to the 

 returning circle of seasons and employments. Thus 

 the Latin annus signified a ring, as we see in the 

 derivative annulus: the Greek term eviavTos implies 



1 Ideler, Berl Trans. 1813. p. 51. 



