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Of the Indians of S. America little is reported. ‘The-sun-is-perpendicular’ was the expression for noon on the Orinoco[80]. The Indians of Chile had words for morning twilight, dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, evening twilight, night, and midnight[81].

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The natives of the Solomon Islands have a rich terminology. In Buin the following degrees of brightness in the daylight are distinguished:—4 a. m., ‘it gradually begins to get light’; 5, ‘the brightness is coming on’; 6, ‘the sun shews himself’; 7, ‘it is getting sun’, ‘the sun is there’; 10, ‘the sun is over the side-rafters of the roof’ (i. e. not yet quite overhead); 12 noon, ‘the sun has come overhead’; 2 p. m., ‘with westerly inclination’, ‘turning’; 3.30, ‘it has come to the tying of the knot’ (on the Gazelle Peninsula they say of this time ‘the sun has sat down to glow’); 5, ‘darkness is drawing near’; 6, ‘it has begun to get dark’; 7, ‘it has grown dark’[100]. Moreover there are words and expressions which mean ‘middle of the heavens’, ‘the sun is over the ridge’, ‘the sun stands below 70° from the horizon’, ‘the sun is on the entrance-beam’[101]. A feature of special note here is that the houses (which must all be built facing the same direction) and their parts serve as aids in indicating time. The inhabitants of New Britain (Bismarck Archipelago) divided up the day according to the position of the sun, and had words for sunrise, noon, afternoon, the time of the declining sun, nearly sunset, sunset, and presumably some others[102].