JUNE, the sixth month in the Christian calendar, consisting of thirty days. Ovid (_Fasti_, vi. 25) makes Juno assert that the name was expressly given in her honour. Elsewhere (_Fasti_, vi. 87) he gives the derivation _a junioribus_, as May had been derived from _majores_, which may be explained as in allusion either to the two months being dedicated respectively to youth and age in general, or to the seniors and juniors of the government of Rome, the senate and the _comitia curiata_ in particular. Others connect the term with the gentile name Junius, or with the consulate of Junius Brutus. Probably, however, it originally 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. The Anglo-Saxons called June "the dry month," "midsummer month," and, in contradistinction to July, "the earlier mild month." The summer solstice occurs in June. Principal festival days in this month: 11th June, St Barnabas; 24th June, Midsummer Day (Nativity of St John the Baptist); 29th June, St Peter.
JUNEAU, formerly HARRISBURG, a mining and trading town picturesquely situated at the mouth of Gold Creek on the continental shore of Gastineau channel, south-east Alaska, and the capital of Alaska. Pop. (1900), 1864 (450 Indians); (1910), 1644. It has a United States custom-house and court-house. The city has fishing, manufacturing and trading interests, but its prosperity is chiefly due to the gold mines in the adjacent Silver Bow basin, the source of Gold Creek, and the site of the great Perseverance mine, and to those on the Treadwell lode on Douglas Island, 2 m. from Juneau. Placer gold was found at the mouth of the creek in 1879, and the city was settled in 1880 by two prospectors named Joseph Juneau and Richard Harris. The district was called Juneau and the camp Harrisburg by the first settlers; exploring naval officers named the camp Rockwell, in honour of Commander Charles Henry Rockwell, U.S.N. (b. 1840). A town meeting then adopted the name of Juneau. The town was incorporated in 1900. In October 1906 the seat of government of Alaska was removed from Sitka to Juneau.