224 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Methods Suggested to provide Simpler Months. 



Various suggestions have been made to bring simpler and more 

 equal montlis into use, and as nearly all plan the repetition of the 

 week-days and datai order of January, February and March in each 

 succeeding three months of the year, we may most easily consider the 

 respective advantages and disadvantages of the four most typical methods, 

 A, B, C, and D, if we concentrate attention upon those three months, 

 bearing in mind that now January has 31 days, February 28, and 

 March 31, and that the proposed months by methods A, B, and C would 

 be exactly repeated in triplets after January February March 



as April May June 



July August September 



October November December 

 Method D provides for the insertion of a new month of four weeks 

 between June and July. 



All the four methods provide for the " odd day of the year " as a 

 " Dies-non ' and public holiday, also for " leap-day " as a summer 

 holiday. 



The " Dies-non " is suggested as " Christmas Day " in both methods 

 A and D ; whilst B proposes it as " New Year's Day," and C reserves 

 it as the " last day of the year.'' 



They all rightly begin the year with Sunday and are planned to 

 provide a fixed calendar for permanently locating equal quarterly and 

 half-yearly terms and give fixity of dates for law, unversity, and school 

 terms, statutory meetings for public authorities, markets, fairs, local 

 festivals, and other anniversaries, such as the Eoyal birthdays and our 

 OAvn occurring on their respective peimanent week-days for their parti- 

 cular dates each year — whilst D further provides for the desired con- 

 venience of fixed Fosters and their contingent festivals, and four fixed 

 dates in every month for each week-duy. They offer tliose many prac- 

 tical advantages over the shifting system we have been content to use, 

 because we did not know any better, until recently some people dared 

 to think improvements could be made. 



The table for comparison of methods A, B, C, and D, records in 

 the heading their proposed sub-divisions of the year, and below each 

 bold indicator letter in the front column details the method by which 

 the days in each three months opposite are proposed to be apportioned. 

 We will now proceed to consider the merits of each. 



The fixity of the week-day names and dates to be repeated each 



three months being arranged for by all the methods leads to the 



first and highly important consideration of the convenient working 



of the weeks within the three repeating lengths of months, which 



bry A end on Monday, "Wednesday and Friday, respectively. 



