Remarks on Ancient Eclipses. 23 



4. If instead of eleven days the correctors of the calendar had 

 •xpunged fcrirteen, the natural orJer of the days of the week 

 would have stood common to both styles, thus : 



1. Tuesday; 2. V/ednesday; 3. Tkursday ; A.Friday; 

 5. Saturday ; 6. Sunday; 1 . Monday ; 8. Tuesday; 9. Wed- 

 nesday ; 10. Thursday ; 11. Friday ; 12. Saturday; 13. Sun- 

 day; 14. Monday, 15. Tuesday; 16. Wednesday; 17. Thurs- 

 day; 18. Friday; 19. Saturday; 20. Sunday; 21. Monday; 

 22. Tuesday: 23. Wednesday ; 24. Thursday ; 25. Friday; 

 26. Saturday'; 27- Sunday ; 28. Monday ; 29. Tuesday; 30. 

 Wednesday. 



5. The year 1800, and the fourth year after a bissextile, was 

 no bissextile ; it being that centenary year when one whole day 

 was to be taiven out of the calendar, which was the 29th day of 

 February : thus, out of the two days lost in the weekly cycle, 

 one has been recovered, although the elapsed time since the cor- 

 rection of the style has not amounted to half a century, and the 

 Julian excess to little more than the third part of a day. In 

 short, had two whole weeks been abolished in the September of 

 1752, the stjle had been more conveniently corrected for three 

 centuries without disturbing the weekly cycle at all, as I have 

 proved above. 



6. But the grand object of the correctors was to restore the 

 equinoxes and solstices to the true times of the year, as regulated 

 by the motion of the sun, with the express design of marking 

 the seasons in their proper places in the calendar ; and this was 

 the onlv reason why they determined not so much upon the 

 weekly cycle as upon the precise days of the month wlien the 

 sun made his passage through the celestial equinoxes and tro- 

 pics. 



7. The autumnal equinox having fallen back eleven whole 

 days; viz. to September 12th in the year 1751, the year pre- 

 ceding the new stvle, the addition of so many days brought it 

 up to the true time of the equinoctial passage of the sun, and to 

 the same dav of the same month of the year it was placed at the 

 council of Nice A.D. 325 ; namely, September 22d, when the 

 sun was observed to enter Libra. 



8. The sum of the years between A.D. 325 and A.D. 1752 is 

 1427 vears : in one day of twenty-four hours are precisely 1440 

 minutes, and eleven days gives the Julian excess for 1440 years, 

 at the rate of eleven minutes per annum, which is very nearly 

 the account. 



9. The alteration of the calendar in the addition of the eleven 

 davfi of the month, and in making the third day of September 

 for the now style to be accounted and reckoned i\\cfourteenthi\a.y, 



was 



