EASTER SUNDAY AND THE DOMINICAL LETTER. 21 



0.0312 of a turn being yet due. The Vernal Equinox is 

 reached not at the same recorded hour and minute as the year 

 previous, but earlier ; and finds itself with each completed cir- 

 cuit farther back by record. The date of the fact is antici- 

 pated and comes nearer and nearer to the first of January last 

 past. The difference of time is 11 minutes, 14.5 seconds per 

 year. At every leap year nearly three-quarters of an hour too 

 much has been intercalated and the record is thrown back by 

 that amount. One might say there is too much leap year, and 

 the remedy is to leave out some of it. 



At the time of the Council of Nice in the year 325 of the 

 Christian Era the real \^ernal Equinox fell on the recorded 21st 

 of March instead of on the 25th of March, the date fixed by 

 Julius Caesar, and from that time on the date kept drawing 

 nearer and nearer to the first of Januaiy, until the Gregorian 

 Calendar Reformation in 1582, when it fell upon March nth. 



Pope Gregory XIII chose that the recorded date of the 

 Vernal Equinox should be the date of the Council of Nice — 

 2ist of March — instead of Caesar's date, 25th of March. His 

 coiTection of 11 minutes, 14.5 seconds per year was applied to 

 1582 — 325 -^ 1257 years, instead of 1582 years. Twelve 

 hundi'ed and fifty-seven years at eleven minutes and twenty- 

 four hundredths of a minute give nine days and eight-tenths 

 of a day, called without sensible error ten days, and to throw 

 these out Friday, October 5th, with letter E, was called Friday, 

 October 15th, with letter A. And the Sunday Letter of 1582 

 became C. It will be noticed that the days have really elapsed 

 in unbroken line, each with its letter. The record of number 

 only was wrong, and was corrected. 



Let us now take a date previous to 1582. The discoveiy 

 of America by Columbus in 1492 — historically October 12th, 

 O. S., October 22nd, N. S. In either case Friday. For the 

 rule given for the ' ' previous ' ' portion of the era gives G as 

 Dominical Letter, making Friday, E, 12th. And it is ninety 

 years from 1492 to 1582. In these ninety 3'ears there are pre- 

 ciselv 16 cvcles of seven letters. So that the N. S. letter of 



