appearance of the Pleiades, and accordingly the youths are said to long as ardently for the rising of the constellation as Mohammedans for the rising of the moon which will put an end to the fast of Ramadan.(1044) The Hottentots date the seasons of the year by the rising and setting of the Pleiades.(1045) An early Moravian missionary settled among the Hottentots, reports that “at the return of the Pleiades these natives celebrate an anniversary; as soon as these stars appear above the eastern horizon mothers will lift their little ones on their arms, and running up to elevated spots, will show to them those friendly stars, and teach them to stretch their little hands towards them. The people of a kraal will assemble to dance and to sing according to the old custom of their ancestors. The chorus always sings: ‘O Tiqua, our Father above our heads, give rain to us, that the fruits (bulbs, etc.), _uientjes_, may ripen, and that we may have plenty of food, send us a good year.’ ”(1046) With some tribes of British Central Africa the rising of the Pleiades early in the evening is the signal for the hoeing to begin.(1047) To the Masai of East Africa the appearance of the Pleiades in the wrest is the sign of the beginning of the rainy season, which takes its name from the constellation.(1048) In Masailand the Pleiades are above the horizon from September till about the seventeenth of May; and the people, as they express it themselves, “know whether it will rain or not according to the appearance or non-appearance of the six stars, called The Pleiades, which follow after one another like cattle. When the month which the Masai call ‘Of the Pleiades’(1049) arrives, and the Pleiades are no longer visible, they know that the rains are over. For the Pleiades set in that month and are not seen again until the season of showers has come to an end:(1050) it is then that they reappear.”(1051) The only other groups of stars for which the Masai appear to have names are Orion’s sword and Orion’s belt.(1052) The Nandi of British East Africa have a special name (_Koremerik_) for the Pleiades, “and it is by the appearance or non-appearance of these stars that the Nandi know whether they may expect a good or a bad harvest.”(1053) The Kikuyu of the same region say that “the Pleiades is the mark in the heavens to show the people when to plant their crops; they plant when this constellation is in a certain position early in the night.”(1054) In Sierra Leone “the proper time for preparing the plantations is shewn by the particular situation in which the Pleiades, called by the Bulloms _a-warrang_, the only stars which they observe or distinguish by peculiar names, are to be seen at sunset.”(1055) We have seen that ancient Greek farmers reaped their corn when the Pleiades rose at sunrise in May, and that they ploughed their fields when the constellation set at sunrise in November.(1056) The interval between the two dates is about six months.