The knowledge of the closest approximation that can be made to the correct number of days in the year, reckoning only whole days, can only be arrived at in one of two ways, either by the observations of the solstices and equinoxes, which is the method adopted e. g. by the Hopi, or by means of the rising of a star. The duration of the solar year is not reached by way of the lunisolar year. Which of the two methods the Egyptians adopted is not in doubt. No notice has come before me which suggests that the Egyptians observed the position of the sunrise or sunset on the horizon, while the stars on the other hand were accurately observed by them. There are calendars which give the position of the constellations in accordance with which the hours of night were determined and proclaimed[982], and in particular the morning rising of Sirius was at all times observed and celebrated. This is primitive[983], but not so the counting of the days between two risings. The latter process would be facilitated if the reckoning was previously carried out in numerical months of 30 days (naturally as a round number, not as an actual month); perhaps this was the first stage. The calendar therefore, as Ed. Meyer has specially pointed out, must have begun to run its course in a year in which the rising of Sirius and New Year’s Day coincided, i. e. it began with a Sothic period. The months within each season are numbered from I to IV. Among primitive peoples it frequently happens that a season gives its name to two months, which are distinguished as the first and second, but a numbering such as that of the Egyptian calendar is unexampled and shews once more a desire to get away from the moon-month. The so-called ‘months’ are rather subdivisions of the seasons.