While the human mind therefore arrives only gradually at the conception of the year, the month is already given by the natural phenomenon. Consequently it is only to be expected that it should be expressly stated that the revolution of the moon determines the greatest measure of time[624], and that we should find peoples who can count reckoning by months and not by years. Thus, for example, it was often said in southern Nigeria: “I sold this canoe to him eight moons ago”[625]. As in the counting of the years a well-known event is used as a starting-point, so it is also with the months. In the New Hebrides they said:--“Two moons have gone since this or that event took place”[626]. But this principle has not prevailed in the counting of the months, since it gives too many months in the course of one human life, and since the months are drawn into another connexion, to which the following chapter is devoted. Only in one case is a reckoning of this nature common, viz. in pregnancy. Examples are superfluous, but I give at least one:--The Samoan woman looks at the moon and expects the beginning of menstruation at a quite definite position of that planet, each woman naturally having a different position of the moon in view. If menstruation does not take place then, she perceives that she is pregnant, and expects her confinement after ten moon-months[627]. No attention is paid at first to the number of days in the month: many primitive peoples cannot even count so far as thirty. A significant passage in a Ho text originating from a native runs:--“The months are reckoned from the moon (the same word is used for both), which stands in the sky. When the moon appears, remains long in the heavens, and then again for a short time is invisible, we say that a month has just gone. We know nothing about the number of days constituting a month. When we see the moon and then it is lost again a month has gone”[628]. A native Basuto says that little regard is paid as to counting the number of days in any month, since the bulky moon itself fills up the deficiency[629]. When men begin to count the days great uncertainty at first prevails: in Buin, for example, the statements vary between 15 and 31 days[630]; the Caffre month is said to have 25 days. Apparently only the time during which the moon is visible is at first counted. So it is said of the Caffres that they count the month from the phases of the moon during its visibility, and that the days of its invisibility are not counted: the moon has gone to sleep[631]. For the Basuto on the other hand only expressions for the two days of the moon’s invisibility are mentioned: the first, ‘the moon has gone into the dark’, the second, ‘the moon is greeted by the apes’, since this animal can see the moon sooner than man[632]. The Ibo-speaking peoples also reckon only 28 days to the month[633], and so do the Dakota[634]. It is only natural that the days of the darkness should