64 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



diffused, or which acts a more important part in the ecoromy of veg- 

 etation. 



CALEOT)AR. A table containing the days, months, festivals, 

 &c., happening in the year. The Roman calendar from which ours 

 is borrowed, was composed by Romulus, who made the year consist of 

 no more than three hundred and sixty-four days. Numa Pompilius 

 made it consist of twelve lunar months of thirty and twenty-nine days 

 alternately, which made three hundred arid fifty-four days; but being 

 fond of an odd number, he added one day more, which made it three 

 hundred and fifty-five days ; and that the civil year might equal the 

 sun's motion, he added a month every second year. Julius Csesar, 

 as a farther improvement, made the year consist of three hundred and 

 sixty-five days, and left the six hours to form a day, at the end of 

 every fourth year, which was added to the month of February. 



This calendar was called the Julian or the old style, in contra- 

 distinction of. the new style introduced by Gregory. In 1582, Pope 

 Gregory XIII, finding perplexity to arise in the computation of time, 

 from some errors in the Julian calendar, thought proper to order the 

 formation and adoption of a new style of reckoning. The astrono- 

 mers and mathematicians whom he summoned to Rome for that pur- 

 pose, after spending several years in investigating the subject, and 

 adjusting the principles of another system, produced what has been 

 since called the Gregorian Calendar. In forming this method of 

 computation eleven days were lopped off from the old calendar ; 

 leaving out in the future, one bissextile day every hundred years, and 

 making every four hundredth a leap year. The Gregorian style, thus 

 formed, was soon adopted by all the catholic states ; and in most of 

 the protestant countries, before the commencement of the 1 8th cen- 

 tury. But it was not until the year 1752, when Britain and her 

 dependencies, by an act of parliament, adopted the neiv style ; at the 

 same time, the Ecclesiastic^ 7 year, which had before commenced on 

 the 25th of March, was made to coincide with the civil year, and 

 ordered, like that, to be computed from the first of January. 



CALM. In metereology that state of the air and water when 

 there is no wind stirring. A calm is more terrible to a seafaring man 

 than a storm, if he has a strong ship, and sea-room enough ; for under 

 the line, excessive heat sometimes produces such dead calms, that 

 ships are obliged to stay two or three months, without being able to 

 stir one way or the other. Two opposite winds will sometimes make 

 a calm. This is frequently observed in the gulf of Mexico, at no 

 great distance from the shore, where some gust, or land wind, will so 

 poise the general easterly wind, as to produce a perfect calm. 



Calms are never so great in the ocean as in the Mediterranean, 

 by reason the flux and reflux of the former keep the water in a con- 

 tinual agitation, even where there is no wind ; whereas, there being 

 no tides in the latter, the calm is sometimes so dead, that the face of 



