For Loango it is reported that the king’s star-gazers apparently took observations from a little wood; further that they sometimes knew how to arrange matters to suit their own convenience, for they gave out (probably when the sky was clouded) that the moon was several days old, and thus gained a couple of hours for the rising of Sirius and could postpone the dreaded thirteenth month until the end of the next year[1179]. In these districts, where a strong day-superstition prevails, external influence is doubtless probable, but the account is significant in that it speaks for an artificial retardation of the calendar. Such a manipulation is characteristic of the professed calendar-maker. The king himself also takes charge of the calendar. The Inca observed the solstices in person, and was assisted in so doing by the cleverest of his people; the priests assembled to determine the equinoxes[1180]. The calendar of the Society Islands was fixed by King Pomare and his family[1181]. That the Inca appeared in a priestly office for this purpose is certain; that Pomare did the same is doubtful, since European influence has no doubt been brought to bear upon this case. The examples just given are not numerous, and this corresponds to the actual state of affairs, since we have here to do with the treatment of a genuine calendarial science by certain peoples,--only at a quite undeveloped stage can questions of the time-reckoning be dealt with in a deliberative assembly--and our researches are concerned with primitive peoples. The end which the calendar-maker has in view is the establishing of an ordered series of days marked out into divisions, the series being kept in place by certain fixed points, and recurring cyclically. First of all the regulation of the lunisolar calendar is his principal task, and it is one which everywhere takes the chief place. For this purpose the calendar-maker must become accurately acquainted with the course of the sun and with the stars. Here the four solstices and equinoxes are distinguished by their recurrence at tolerably regular intervals of time; the stars however cannot of themselves be brought into a system with equal intervals of time, but are only applied to such a system in order to fix it. Hence it follows that the observation of the solstices and equinoxes has, at least in single cases, been erected into a calendric system, but the observation of the stars not so--except in Babylon--although they also are observed, so that they come to be accurately known, and the planets are even discovered, e. g. by the Polynesians. The calendar and practical life become to some degree separated from each other; the first lays the principal emphasis upon the correct ordering of the series of days, which is of especial importance on religious grounds for the selection of days and the fixing of the right day for the religious observances; in practical life, however, the point of chief importance is to determine the