In the Hawaiian group, when not applied to the summer season, the word keeps its original sense of ‘an indefinite period of time’, ‘a life-time, an age’, and is never applied to the year: its duration may be more or less than a year, according to circumstances[415]. So far our authority. It seems however to be questionable whether the original sense is not the concrete ‘produce of the seasons’, rather than the abstract ‘period of time’. It is significant that on the Society Islands the bread-fruit season is called _te tau_, and the names of the other two seasons, _te tau miti rahi_ and _te tau poai_, are formed by adding to this name[416]. Of great significance are the accurate reports for the Melanesians. They have no conception of the year as a definite period of time. The word _tau_ (a Polynesian loan-word), or _niulu_, which corresponds most nearly to ‘year’, signifies a season, and so (now) the space of time between recurring seasons. Thus the yam has its _tau_ of five moons, from the planting--when the erythrina is in flower--until the harvest, after the palolo has come and gone. The bread-fruit has its _tau_ during the winter months: bananas and cocoa-nuts have no _tau_, since they always bear fruit. The notion of the year as the time from yam to yam, from palolo to palolo, has been readily received, but it is very doubtful if such a conception is anywhere purely native[417]. The Melanesians are only interested in the concrete phenomena of the year, and not in time-reckoning as such, and therefore do not in practice combine the period from yam-planting to harvest with that from harvest to planting to form a year. When it is pointed out, however, it is quite clear to them that this is a single period of the variation of the seasons. The Polynesians have themselves noted this fact, and accordingly the sense of the word _tau_ has been extended from ‘season’ to ‘year’. Whether the conception of the year was known in the Indo-European period is not certain: it is however significant that all the words for ‘year’ of which the etymology is fairly certain either refer to the produce of the year--as ὥρα and its cognates, and also the word ‘year’ itself, Old Scand. _ár_--or else come from the _pars pro toto_ counting of the year. Thus the Slavonic _leto_ means ‘summer’ and ‘year’. Sanskrit _çarad_ means ‘autumn’: that the corresponding Avestic _sared_ means ‘year’ is explained by the fact that the years were reckoned in autumns. The Greek ἐνιαυτός is unexplained, but in Homer, in the law of Gortyn, and in the inscription of the Labyades it has also the little observed sense of ‘anniversary’[418], which may be the original sense. Further evidence of the lack of an acquaintance with the conception of the year is afforded by the fact that the Germanic peoples render it by periphrases like ‘winter and summer’, etc.[419].