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BISSEXTILE: OE LEGENDS CONNECTED WITH 



LEAP YEAE. 



By the Rev. C. Borrough, M.A. 



As the suu and moon wero originally designed, not only to give light to the 

 Earth, but to be " for signs, and for seasons, and years " ; so the earliest records 

 show that man distinguished between a solar and a lunar year — a year measured 

 by the apparent course of the sun through the twelve zodiacal constellations, and 

 a year divided according to the twelve periods of the moon's rotation round her 

 own axis. 



At the time of the Flood, about B.C. 2349, the lunar year was divided into 

 twelve months of thirty days each, or 360 days ; and this year perfectly corres- 

 ponds with the Egyptian Vague year, without the five intercalary days ; that is 

 to say, the lunar year was corrected by the solar year in each case. So Julius 

 Csesar, whose name was given to this month, originally known by the Romans as 

 Quinctilis, or the 5th, adapted the year in B.C. 46 to the sun's course. But the 

 Julian Calendar supposes the mean tropical year to be 36.5 days 6 hours, and this 

 exceeds the real amount by 11 minutes and 12 seconds, the accumulation of which, 

 year after year, caused at last considerable inconvenience. Accordingly in 1582 

 Pope Gregory XIII. again reformed the Calendar. The ten days by which the 

 year had been unduly retarded were struck out by a regulation that the day after 

 October 4th in that year should be called the 15th, and it was ordered that where- 

 as hitherto an intercalary day had been inserted every four years, for the future 

 three such intercalations should be omitted, viz., in those years vvliich are divi- 

 sible without remainder by 100, but not by 400. Thus, according to the Julian 

 Calendar, the years 1600, 1700, ISOO, 1900, and 2000 were to have been leap years, 

 but by the regulation of Pope Gregory, the years 1700, 1800, 1900 were to receive 

 no intercalation, while the years 1600 and 2000 were to be bissextile as before. 

 The Bull which effected this change was issued February 24th, 1582. Even now 

 the reckoning is not quite accurate, for in 3,600 years the excess will have amount- 

 ed to 24 hours ! It has been proposed, consequently, by the French astronomer 

 Delambre, that 3,600, 7,200, 10,800, &c., shall not be leap years, and so the mea- 

 surement of time will really be made exact for the future ! The Gregorian Calen- 

 dar was introduced in the greater part of Italy, as well as in Spain and Portugal, 

 on the day named in the Bull. In France, two months after, by an edict of 

 Henry III., the 9th December was followed by the 20th. The Roman Catholic 

 parts of Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries adopted the correction in 

 1583, Poland in 15S6, Hungary in 1587. In England the Gregorian Calendar was 

 not adopted till 1752, and Russia still retains the "old style" or Julian year. 



The first day of the Roman month was, you know, called the Kalends : the 

 seventh of March, May, July, and October, and the fifth of the rest, was called 

 the Nones; and eight days after the Nones came the Ides. The intermediate days 



