As a basis for the counting either a longer or a shorter season may serve, or indeed any popular natural phenomenon of regular annual occurrence. Thus of the Chinhwan of Formosa it is stated that they have no calendar: they only know that a new year has come when a certain flower blooms again[383]. The Paez of Columbia have a word _enzte_, ‘fishing, summer, year’, since a great fishing is only engaged in once a year, in January or February[384]. In the language of the Tupi of S. Brazil the year is always called _akayú_, cashew-tree, which blossoms once a year, and produces a much-prized reniform stone-fruit which is also often used in the preparation of wine: the word also means ‘season’. This tree bears fruit only once a year, whence it comes that the Brazilians reckon their age by the stones, laying aside one for each year, and keeping them in a small basket reserved for this purpose[385]. The Algonquin of Virginia reckoned in _cohonks_, winters; the name refers to the wild geese, and shews that these have come back to them so many times[386]. In medieval Swiss charters time is often reckoned in _louprisi_, ‘leaf-fall’; _dri_, _nün louprisi_ = when the leaves have fallen three, nine times, etc.[387]. In a later section on the beginning of the year we shall find that the appearance of a certain constellation, in particular the Pleiades, gives the signal for the beginning of the agricultural labour, whence is developed the importance of this date as the opening of the year. The time between two like appearances of the same constellation, e. g. between two heliacal risings, is a year. In this manner the name of the constellation itself can come to denote ‘year’. In many parts of S. America the same word means both ‘Pleiades’ and ‘year’[388]. The inhabitants of the Marquesas call the year of 12 months, as distinguished from the 10-month fruit-year, by the name of the Pleiades, _mata-iti_[389]. How easily this comes to pass is shewn by a statement made for the Bangala of the Upper Congo. The culmination of the constellation _kole_ gave the principal planting-season. This was so familiar to the natives that the informant used the word _kole_ as equivalent to the word ‘year’[390]. This is in its very nature a _pars pro toto_ designation, since it refers to an annually recurring phase of the stars.