SIXTH ANNUAL MEETIXG 1.5 



MIXORITY REPORT OF COMMITTEE OX 

 CALENDAR REFORM. 



A dozen years ago while in Mexico City, my attention 

 was attracted as is that of nearly every tourist in that region 

 to the old Aztec calendar stone with its 13 divisions designed 

 centuries ago to represent 13 months of the year and the 

 question arose in my mind as to the desirability of having 13 

 months of 28 days rather than 12 months of a varied number 

 of days as we are at present doing. 



Since that time I have been interested in various pro- 

 posals made for reforming the calendar. I notice that as long 

 ago as 1827. August Comte proposed a year with 13 months. 

 Whether the suggestion came to him by the way of the 

 Aztecs or not I do not know. 



Similar proposals have been made at various times since 

 then and various plans have been suggested as readers of Sci- 

 ence. Nature, and other magazines have noticed within the 

 last three or four years. Barton. Chamberlin. Clifford. Cohen. 

 Cotsworth. Dabney. Dalziel. Flammarion. Grosclaude. Hesse. 

 Hopkins. Kent. Patterson, Pearce. Reininghaus. Slocum. 

 Super. Webb, and others have made various contributions to 

 the discussion of the subject. <9) The question has been for 

 some time agitated in Switzerland. Holland. Germany. France 

 and England and bills have been introduced in various legis- 

 lative bodies. 



People, even members of this Academy, often ask what 

 is the trouble with the present calendar. To be sure it is 

 superior to the calendars of the Ancient Egyptians. Jews and 

 Greeks, which accorded so imperfectly with the cycle of the 

 seasons as to eventually transform the summer months to the 

 winter season. While Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory great- 

 ly improved the calendar, still there are three or four partic- 

 ulars in which it is eminently unsatisfactor\-. such as in its 

 disagreement with the astronomical seasons, its random 

 length of months, its changing days of the week for the dif- 

 ferent days of the month and the consequent changing of 

 holidays. 



Among all the proposals which I have seen the so-called 

 Geneva plan, set forth so admirably by Oberlin Smith, in the 

 Popular Science Monthly for December. 1912. seems most 

 desirable. ( Parenthetically it may be said that the need for 

 such change becomes possibly even more evident when such 

 a careful writer as Mr. Smith in writing for such a magazine 

 as the Popular Science Monthly makes what seems to me to 

 be a mistake in calculatinsf that his calendar could best begin 



