Читать книгу Primitive Time-reckoning. A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples онлайн

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Instances are numerous in which phenomena like those mentioned by Hesiod serve as signs for agricultural labour. The Indians of Pennsylvania say that when the leaf of the white oak, which comes out in spring, is as large as a mouse’s ear it is time to plant maize: they note that the whippoorwill has come by then, and is constantly fluttering round them calling out his Indian name wekolis in order to remind them of planting-time, just as if he were saying ‘hacki heck’, ‘go and plant maize’[215]. Among the Thonga the period in July when the warm weather begins is called shimunu, ‘the little heat’: the mahogany and sala trees become covered with leaves, certain flowers blossom. Winter has passed away, soon the summer will come. When the Thonga woman notes these signs she picks up her hoe and sets off for the hills or the marshes to make the fields ready. In January comes nwebo, the time for the first ears of maize to ripen[216]. Among the Ba-Ronga January is nuebo, the time of the first ripe ears: great pains are taken to keep away the birds from the sorgho fields, and therefore one period is known as ‘the time when the birds are driven away’[217]. When a certain mushroom named kulat bantilong appears in large quantities the Dyaks of S. E. Borneo regard it as a sign that the time for rice-planting has come[218]; among the Malgassi the blossoming of the shrub Vernonia appendiculata in November is regarded in the same way[219]. In New Zealand plants and birds which appear at regular seasons give signs of the approach of the time to begin agricultural labours. Two kinds of migratory cuckoo, Cuculus piperatus and nitens, which appear at Christmas-time on the coasts, mark the period of the first potato-harvest. The flowering of the beautiful Clematis albida reminds the people to dig over the soil for the planting of potatoes, which is done in October[220]. According to the communication of a native, the Basutos reckon time by the changing of the seasons, the birth-times of animals, the annual variation and growth of plants, but also by the stars and the moon[221]. The most curious method is one common among the Hidatsa Indians, who reckon from the development of the buffalo calf in utero[222]. Such signs may also serve to mark off the longer seasons: the Tunguses begin summer with the time when the grayling spawns, and winter with the time when the first good squirrel is caught[223].