The counting of the days from the dawns is unique, and the counting from the day-time is comparatively rare: the Indo-European peoples of olden times, and indeed most of the peoples of the globe, count the days from the nights. For this it will be sufficient to quote Schrader’s statement:--“Moreover it can hardly be necessary to give evidence for this well-known custom of antiquity. In Sanskrit a period of 10 days is called _daçarâtrá_ (:_râtrî_ = ‘night’); _nîçanîçam_, ‘night by night’ = ‘daily’. ‘Let us celebrate the old nights (days) and the autumns (years)’, says a hymn. In the Avesta the counting from nights (_xsap_, _xsapan_, _xsapar_) is carried out to a still greater extent. As for the Germanic peoples, among whom Tacitus had already observed this custom,[13] we constantly find in ancient German legal documents such phrases as _sieben nehte_, _vierzehn nacht_, _zu vierzehn nachten_. In English _fortnight_, _sennight_ are in use to-day. That the custom existed among the Celts is proved by Caesar, _De Bell. Gall._ VI, 18, _spatia omnis temporis non numero dierum, sed noctium finiunt_ (‘they define all spaces of time not by the number of days but by the number of nights’). The Arabians have the same practice. They say ‘in three nights’, ‘seventy nights long’, and date e. g. ‘on the first night of Ramadan’, ‘when two nights of Ramadan have gone’, or ‘are left’[14].” For primitive and barbaric peoples the evidence is equally abundant. The Polynesians in general counted time in nights. Night is _po_, to-morrow is _a-po-po_, i. e. the night’s night, yesterday is _po-i-nehe-nei_, the night that is past[15]. The New Zealanders, in former times, had no names for days, but only for nights[16], and so with the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands--and the same is certainly true of the Polynesians as a whole, since they describe the ‘days’, or rather the nights, by the phases of the moon. The Society Islanders reckon in nights; to the question ‘How many days?’ corresponds in their tongue ‘How many nights?’[17] So also do the inhabitants of the Marquesas[18]. In the Malay Peninsula periods exceeding a fraction of a day are reckoned in nights[19]. Among the Wagogos of German East Africa the phases of the moon and the number of nights serve as more exact determinations of time. The third night after the appearance of the moon, for example, is the day following the third night after the moon’s appearance[20]. Sometimes they say ‘day and night’ when they wish to describe the full day of 24 hours. Occasionally they say that they have worked so many days, with reference to the day-time only[21]. Except in the case of this tribe I have found no notes on the African peoples; little attention seems to have been paid to the point in their case. But the material for America abounds. The Greenlanders reckon in nights[22], though certainly we are not told how those who live north of the Polar Circle reckon in summer. So do the Indians of Pennsylvania[23],