king to give a month’s notice before each ceremony takes place[1126]. A pastoral people may also have a well-developed festival-cycle marking the points of the year which are important for their herds. I quote as an example the main festivals of the Reindeer Koryak of Eastern Siberia. There is a ceremony on the Return of the Herd from the summer pastures, when the first snow covers the ground. In spring, when the fawning period is over and the reindeer have lost their antlers, the fawn festival is celebrated. The fire in the house is put out and a new one started by means of the sacred fire-board. Some tribes pile up the antlers of the slaughtered reindeer. Other festivals are observed:--1, when the sun marks the approach of summer after the winter solstice: a sacrifice is then offered to the sun; 2, in the month of March, when the does commence to fawn: a sacrifice is offered to The-One-on-High; 3, in spring, when the grass commences to sprout and the leaves appear on the trees; 4, when mosquitoes put in their appearance--reindeer are then slain as an offering to The-One-on-High, lest the mosquitoes scatter the herd[1127]. Here the development is simple and clear, but not so among many peoples where agriculture or the raising of cattle does not occupy so important a place. The Maidu of northern California have four seasons and four festivals founded by the hero Oankoitupeh:--‘the open air festival’ in the spring, ‘the dry season festival’ about the first of July, ‘the burning to the dead’ about the first of September[1128], and ‘the winter festival’ about the last of December[1129]. The connexion with the seasons is clear, but we do not even know whether the names are of genuine native origin. This example clearly shews that the great difficulty lies in the fact that the real nature of the festivals is unknown. But often where detailed accounts of a festival exist, the original reason for it becomes obscured in the course of the development, so that the original connexion between festival and season cannot be established. This is especially the case with peoples among whom the religious life has had an especially strong development. A phenomenon peculiar to the peoples of the far North is that the winter is the time of the festivals. The summer is the good season, when supplies for the winter must be collected; it is therefore a very busy time, when each family has to work for itself and has no leisure for festivals. The winter is the time of rest, in which the people live on the supplies already collected; they naturally crowd closer together, and have much leisure, which is used for religious ceremonies and for games. Hence the winter is the time of the religious ceremonies among the Eskimos, the Tlinkit, and other Indians of N. W. America[1130], and hence the Yule festival celebrated in the winter becomes the greatest festival of the Scandinavian peoples[1131].