It is true indeed of most primitive peoples, as is said of the Hottentots, that they are well acquainted with the conception (_sic!_ I should have said rather: the concrete phenomenon) of the year, _guri-b_, as a single period of the seasonal variation, but do not reckon in years in this sense[372]. That is to say the year is by them empirically given but not limited in the abstract: above all it is not a calendarial and numerical quantity. Of the Waporogo it is said:--Somewhat more difficult (than the times of day) is the conception of the year. Only older, more intelligent people have a clear idea of it, the sowing-time and the rainy seasons constituting their points of reference. But they too can only reckon up a few years (though they certainly do this by counting the seasons, cp. below, p. 92), and for the great mass of the people the conception of the year does not exist[373]. The Bontoc Igorot has no idea of a cycle of time greater than a year, and in fact it is the rare individual who thinks in terms of a year[374]. The length of the year consequently varies. Among the Banyankole it begins with the first heavy rains and lasts until the next heavy rains, so that a year may be longer or shorter by a few days: it is a matter of no consequence whether it is a week or even three weeks that are taken off or added to the length[375]. With the agricultural year it is just the same. For the Dyaks of Borneo the rice-harvest is a main division of the year (_njelo_); in September after the conclusion of the harvest the year is at an end; a definite beginning, a New Year’s Day, is unknown[376]. The translation of a Ho text runs:--“When the inhabitants of the interior begin to cultivate the yam-fields they begin a new year: when the yams are dug up and the dry grass is burnt away, a year has passed”[377]. Among the Thonga the notion of the year (_lembe_, _dji-ma_) is extremely vague: the year begins at two different periods, that of tilling and that of harvesting the first-fruits. They do not make any difference between a lunar and a solar year[378]. A very significant account comes from Dahomey. The word for year does not denote any definite number of months: the sense is rather ‘to plant maize and eat, to plant it again and harvest it’. At the end of the harvest the year also is at an end[379].