on New Year's morning to say all sorts of
pretty things. They do not carry an almanack in their pockets, do
they?"

"Well," remarked Willis, "parrots do say and do odd things. I heard of
one that once frightened away a burglar, by screaming out, 'The
Campbells are coming;' so, Miss Wolston, perhaps yours does keep a
log."

"By counting its knuckles," suggested Jack.

"Counting one's knuckles is an ingenious, but rather a clumsy
substitute for the calendar," remarked Wolston.

"And who invented the calendar?" inquired Willis.

"I am not aware that the calendar was ever invented," replied Wolston.
"Fruit commences by being a seed, the admiral springs from the
cabin-boy, words and language succeed naturally the babble of the
infant; so, I presume, the calendar has grown up spontaneously to its
present degree of perfection."

"Yes, Mr. Wolston, but some one must have laid the first plank."

"The motions of the sun, moon, and stars would, in all probability,
suggest to the early inhabitants of our globe a natural means of
measuring time. God, in creating the heavenly bodies, seems to have
reflected that man would require some index to regulate his labors and
the acts of his civil life. The primary and most elementary
subdivisions of time are day and night, and it demanded no great
stretch of human ingenuity to divide the day into two sections, called
forenoon and afternoon, or into twelve sections, called hours. Such
subdivisions of time would probably suggest themselves simultaneously
to all the nations of the earth. Necessity, who is the mother of all
invention, doubtless called the germs of our calendar into existence."

"Yes, so far as the days and hours are concerned. There are other
divisions--weeks, for example."

"The division of time into weeks is a matter that belongs entirely to
revelation; the Jews keep the last day of every seven as a day of
rest, in accordance with the law of Moses, and the Christians dedicate
the first day of every seven to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

"Then there are months."

"The month is another natural division. The return of the moon in
conjunction with the sun, was observed to occur at regular intervals
of twenty-nine days, twelve hours, and some minutes. This interval is
called the _lunar month_, which for a long time was regarded as the
radical unit in the admeasurement of time."

"But the year is now the unit, is it not?"

"Yes, in course of time the moon, in