There is a pleasing passage in Sanazzaro's Arcadia, wherein he describes two large beechen tablets, suspended in the temple of Pan, one on each side of the altar, _scritte di rusticane lettere; le quali successivamente di tempo in tempo per molti anni conservate dai passati pastori, contenevano in se le antiche leggi, e gli ammaestramenti della pastorale vita: dalle quali tutto quello che fra le selve oggi se adopra, ebbe prima origine._ One of these tablets contained directions for the management of cattle. In the other _eran notati tutti i di dell' anno, e i varj mutamenti delle stagioni, e la inequalità delle notte e del giorno, insieme con la osservazione delle ore, non poco necessarie a viventi, e li non falsi pronostici delle tempestati: e quando il Sole con suo nascimento denunzia serenita, e quando pioggia, e quando venti, e quando grandini; e quali giorni son della luna fortunati, e quali infelici alle opre de' mortali: e che ciascuno in ciascuna ora dovesse fuggire, o seguitare, per non offendere le osservabili volonta degli Dii._ It is very probable that Sanazzaro has transferred to his pastoral, what may then have been the actual usage in more retired parts of the country; and that before the invention of printing rendered almanacks accessible to every one, a calendar, which served for agricultural as well as ecclesiastical purposes, was kept in every considerable church. Olaus Magnus says that the northern countrymen used to have a calendar cut upon their walking sticks (_baculos annales_, he calls them); and that when they met at church from distant parts, they laid their heads together and made their computations. The origin of these wooden almanacks, which belong to our own antiquities, as well as to those of Scandinavia, is traced hypothetically to the heathen temple, authentically to the church. It has been supposed that the Cimbri received the Julian calendar from Cæsar himself, after his conquest as it is called of Britain; and that it was cut in Runic characters for the use of the priests, upon the rocks, or huge stones, which composed their rude temples, till some one thought of copying it on wood and rendering it portable, for common use:—_donec tandem_, (are Wormius's words), _ingenii rarâ dexteritate emersit ille, quisquis tandem fuerit, qui per lignea hæcce compendia, tam utile tamque necessarium negotium plebi communicandum duxit: cujus nomen si exstaret æquiore jure fastis hisce insereretur, quam multorum tituli, quos boni publici cura vix unquam tetigit._