JUNE, the sixth month in our present calendar, consists of thirty days. Ovid, in his Fasti (vi. 25), makes Juno assert that the name was expressly given in her honour :—

“Ne tamen ignores vulgique errore traharis, Junius a nostro nomine nomen habet.”

In another part of the Fasti (vi. 87) he gives the derivation a junioribus, as May had been derived from Majores. Others connect the term with the gentile name Junius, or with the consulate of Junius Brutus. Probably, however, it has an agricultural reference, and origin ally denoted the month in which crops grow to ripeness. In the old Latin calendar June was the fourth month, and in the so-called year of Romulus it is said to have had thirty days; but at the time of the Julian reform of the calendar its days were only twenty-nine. To these Caesar added the thirtieth, which it still retains. The Anglo-Saxons had several names for the month of June. They called it “the dry month,” “midsummer month,” and, in contradistinction to July, “the earlier mild month.” The summer solstice occurs in June. The principal days now observed in this month are the following June 11 th, St Barnabas; June 24th, Midsummer Day (Nativity of St John the Baptist); and June 29th, St