Similar time-determinations from natural phenomena are still not entirely neglected by the modern peasant. In Bohuslän (W. Sweden) the sowing-time was at hand when the swallow had come, it was the right sowing-time when the juniper flowered. In northern Scania (S. Sweden) the barley was to be sown when the hawthorn was in bloom. Older people could not give their birthdays but only knew that they were born e. g. at the rye- or potato-harvest, when the cattle were first driven out to pasture (in the spring), etc. My father knew quite well that his birthday was the fifth of September, but when anyone asked him when he was born he would generally answer: ‘When they pick hops’. The Eskimos said that such and such a person was born when eggs were collected or seals caught[205]. From modern Palestine a bond is quoted in which a sum of money was to be paid when next the _fakûs_ (a kind of cucumber) was ripe[206]. We return to the primitive peoples and give first a few examples in which a natural phenomenon serves as the sign of the beginning of one of the longer divisions of the year or of some occupation, generally agriculture. Of the Bushmen we are told that they paid particular attention to the time at which the first thunder-storm broke. They hailed it with great joy since they counted it a sure sign that summer had commenced. In the midst of their excessive rejoicing they tore in pieces their garments of skins, threw them into the air, and danced for several nights in succession. The Garieb Bushmen made great outcries accompanied with dancing and playing upon their drums[207]. The Banyankole of Uganda used the euphorbia trees to guide them as to the nearness of the rainy season: when these trees began to shoot out new growth they knew that the rains were near[208]. The Indians of the Orinoco took great pains to determine the approach of the rainy season, as Gilij relates in a chapter entitled: _De segni, che precedon l’inverno_[209]. The signs were:--The scream of the Araguato monkeys at midnight or at the approach of day; the sudden bursting into blossom of certain trees; the swelling of the brooks, which almost dry up in summer but swell a few days before the rainy season; the yams which in summer have lost their leaves suddenly grow green again when the rainy season is at hand; finally the heliacal setting of the Pleiades. The tribe of the Bigambul in S. E. Australia reckon the seasons from the blossoming of certain trees. _Yerra_, for example, is the name of a tree that blossoms in September: this time of the year is therefore called _yerrabinda_. The apple-tree blossoms at Christmas time, which is called _nigabinda_. The iron-bark tree blossoms about the end of January, and this time is called _wobinda_. The height of summer however is named by them ‘the time when the ground burns the feet’: at this time no trees blossom[210]. The natives of New Britain (Bismarck Archipelago) determine the planting-season from the buds