These accounts are unfortunately of little use, since they say too little about the method of the counting. Even when a complete list of the days or nights of the month does seem to be forthcoming (the Wagogo, the Kubu), it generally happens that the counting proceeds from several starting-points, so that the month is divided up into smaller divisions. This is natural, since primitive peoples not only possess small capacity for counting but also prefer to keep the concrete phenomenon in view. It has already been pointed out that the counting frequently begins at the two most prominent phases, the new and the full moon; by this means the month is divided into the two corresponding halves of the waxing and the waning moon, or in respect of the appearance or non-appearance of the moon in the evening and early night into the light and the dark halves. The difference between these halves follows from direct observation of nature, and they are therefore known even to peoples which do not count the days, e. g. the inhabitants of Buin[704], the Germanic tribes, and others. In Swedish the distinction between _ny_ and _nedan_, i. e. the time of the waxing and of the waning moon, is still known. The Masai, besides a full list of the days of the month, have a second reckoning according to the light and the dark halves of the month[705]. The Hindus and the civilised peoples of S. E. Asia reckon in the same way: of these systems of time-reckoning the Hindu has exercised a powerful influence. Avesta shews the same reckoning. In the old Gallic calendar of Coligny each month is divided into two sharply distinguished halves. The Romans indeed, in the form of their calendar known to us, reckoned so many days before the Kalends (the first day of the month), the Nones (the 5th or 7th), and the Ides (the 13th or 15th), but before their calendar settled into its curious and quite irrational historic form the _Kalendae_ must have been the day of the new moon, which was publicly proclaimed, and the _Idus_ the day of full moon. The _Nonae_ are secondary: the word simply means the ninth (day), i. e. before the Ides, which position the day occupies in the inclusive reckoning employed. The Greek reckoning in decades is well-known, but in earlier times a bipartite division of the month appears. Homer divides the month into ἱστάμενος and φθίνων (‘rising’ and ‘fading’), Hesiod once mentions a ‘thirteenth day of the rising moon’[706].