Festivals and time-reckoning are from the beginning inseparably bound together. Some of the former have already been dealt with, e. g. the festivals of the new moon, the full moon, and the beginning and end of the year. It remains briefly to sketch the development of this connexion and to illustrate it with a few examples. A detailed discussion would lead us too far away from the main theme into the domain of the history of religion. How many pages have been written about the New Year festival alone! The connexion between festivals and time-reckoning is grounded in the fact that both are originally dependent on the phases of Nature. Festivals are already held at definite times of the year by peoples who know nothing of a proper time-reckoning, e. g. the much-discussed Intichiuma ceremonies of the aborigines of Australia. They are closely associated with the breeding of the animals and the flowering of the plants with which each totem is respectively identified, and as the object of the ceremony is to increase the number of the totemic animal or plant, it is most naturally held at a certain season. In Central Australia the seasons are limited, so far as the breeding of animals and the flowering of plants is concerned, to two--a dry one of uncertain and often great length, and a rainy one of short duration and often irregular occurrence. The latter is followed by an increase in animal life and exuberance of plant growth. In the case of many of the totems it is just when there is promise of approach of the good season that it is customary to hold the ceremony. The exact time is fixed by the _alatunja_ (the chief of the local group)[1119]. The ripening of a plant which is an important article of food is often accompanied by certain ceremonies by which the eating of the fruit is first made lawful. These so-called sacrifices of the first-fruits, which have been touched upon above[1120], are therefore dependent upon a definite natural phase, and there may be several of them in the course of the year.