the sign. An Athenian sacred calendar has also been preserved, in which the months are separated by similar figures. On the page opposite is a more complicated illustration, which includes both the signs and the labors of the months. It is taken from the Kalender of Shepherdes, as published in 1503.1

This figure is a compendious pictorial calendar. The central circle contains two figures, a woman with a nosegay, who represents warm weather, and a man sitting out-ofdoors by a fire, who represents cold weather. In the second circle are the months, each typified by an appropriate scene: January, by a man slaughtering a boar; February, by a man sitting at a table with a tankard before him; March, by a woman warming her hands and feet at a fire; April, by a pruner at work; May, by a lover and his lass out a-Maying; June, by a plowman; July, by a mower; August, by a reaper; September, by a man with a mattock; October, by a man driving a horse; November, by a vintager; December, by a shepherd. If these occupations do not suit our climate, we must remember that they were not designed for it, but rather for the south of Europe, for we are dealing with a very old set of conventional figures. In the outermost circle are the signs of the zodiac, each divided between two months.

Illuminated calendars dating from Anglo-Saxon times preserve an interesting series of the labors of the months which continued, with some variations, through the middle ages "and even appears in the printed calendars and almanacs of the sixteenth century in England, Germany, and the Low Countries."2 The killing of swine, which is in the Kalender of Shepherdes, was a favorite subject for November or December. It is found, for instance, on an old Norman font at Brookland, in Kent, on the archivolt of 1 On this work see page 53, above.

2 Thomas Wright, Archæological Album, London, 1845, p. 64.

the great west doorway of St. Mark's Cathedral at Venice, at the side of the central doorway of the façade of the cathedral at Lucca, on the tympanum of the doorway of the monastery of St. Ursin, in France, on a capital in the Doge's palace at Venice, in a mosaic pavement at Piacenza and again at Aosta, in the famous paintings by Giotto in the great hall at Padua. A very vigorous example occurs in a fourteenth-century medallion of painted glass in Dews

bury Church, Yorkshire, which may have been meant as a type of the whole season of winter. The edge of the axe is turned backward, and the boar is tied by the snout to the stump of a tree.1

Such figurative representations of the months and seasons turn up everywhere, as the examples already given have doubtless suggested, from one end of Europe to the other. In introducing them into his Almanac Mr. Thomas was simply following the fashion of his time,

1 Archæologia, XLIV, plate V, opposite p. 178.

but he was unconsciously attaching his little annual to a very venerable tradition. We must refrain from pursuing the subject, attractive as it is. The reader who wishes to know more will be able to satisfy his curiosity by consulting a learned article by Mr. James Fowler in the forty-fourth volume of the Archæologia, the official publication of the London Society of Antiquaries.

Except for symbolical illustrations such as we have just considered, Mr. Thomas did not yield to the temptation to embellish his Almanac with engravings, for the occasional diagrams to elucidate eclipses and other astronomical matters and the map of New England are not for show but for use. The first departure from this rule was when, in 1835, he yielded to the solicitations of his publishers and consented to let his portrait appear.

Some of the early New England astronomers had less self-restraint, and tricked out their books with all manner of eccentric novelties. Ames does so with peculiar zest in his issue for 1772, which is advertised on the cover as "containing, besides what is usual in Almanacks, a Description of the Dwarf that lately made her Appearance in this Town; as also a curious Method of taking Wax and Honey without destroying the Bees." The dwarf was Miss Emma Leach, born in Beverly, "about 20 Miles distant from this town," in 1719. The description is reinforced by a very disagreeable cut on the cover. Besides this monstrosity, we have a large portrait of " J-n D-k-ns-n, Esq; Barrister at Law," that is John Dickinson (17321808) of the Continental Congress, who is described in the title as "The Patriotic American Farmer" and as one "who with Attic Eloquence, and Roman Spirit, hath asserted the Liberties of the British Colonies in America." Dickinson is resting his elbow on Magna Charta and holds in his hand a scroll inscribed "Farmer's Letters," his well-known book in defence of freedom. The same num