There can be no doubt that when there was an absence of all civilisation and a calendar of any sort was unknown, the year meant simply the succession of seasons, and that no attempt would be made to reckon any day as its commencement. And as soon as this was attempted a difficulty would arise from there not being an exact number of days in the year. So that when reckoned as the interval between certain positions of the sun they would be of different lengths, which would introduce some difficulty as to the commencement of the year. Be this the case, however, or not, Mr. Haliburton's researches seem to show that the earliest form of year was the sidereal one, and that it was regulated by the Pleiades. In speaking of that constellation we have noticed that among the islanders of the southern hemisphere and others there are two years in one of ours, the first being called the Pleiades above and the second the Pleiades below; and we have seen how the same new year's day has been recognised in very many parts of the world and among the ancient Egyptians and Hindoos. This year would begin in November, and from the intimate relation of all the primitive calendars that have been discovered to a particular day, taken as November 17 by the Egyptians, it would appear probable that for a long time corrections were made both by the Egyptians and others in order to keep the phenomenon of the Pleiades just rising at sunset to one particular named day of their year--showing that the year they used was a sidereal one. This can be traced back as far as 1355 B.C. among the Egyptians, and to 1306 B.C. among the Hindoos. There seem to have been in use also shorter periods of three months, which, like the two-season year, appear to have been, as they are now among the Japanese, regulated by the different positions of the Pleiades. Among the Siamese of the present day, there are both forms of the year existing, one sidereal, beginning in November, and regulated by the fore-named constellation; and the other tropical, beginning in April. Whether, however, the year be reckoned by the stars or by the sun, there will always be a difficulty in arranging the length of the year, because in each case there will be about a quarter of a day over. It seems, too, to have been found more convenient in early times to take 360 days as the length of the year, and to add an intercalary month now and then, rather than 365 and add a day.