44 UN/VBRSAL ERUDITION. 

 the year run through all the feafons, and fall 

 omctimes in fummer, and fometimes in winter. 



X. The common Julian year has 365 days 

 and the biflextile 366. The fourth year is al'- 

 rays biffextile. The emperor Julius C*far, the 

 Dormer of the Roman calendar, fixed the folar 

 year, by the advice of his aftronomer Soflygenes, 

 at 365 days, 6 hours, and confequently at 1 1 mi- 

 nutes more than the truth ; and which produced 

 m a hundred years, a difference of 18 hours and 

 20 minutes. The Julian year was ufed through- 

 out all Chnftianity till the year 1582, when 

 pope Gregory again altered the calendar. 



XL The common Gregorian year con fids, like 

 the Julian, of 365 days, and the biflextile of 

 366. But as in a hundred years there can be 

 only 24 biffextiles, at the end of four hundred 

 years there will confequently be a furplus of 22 

 hours ; Gregory therefore appointed the biffex- 

 tile every fourth year, but at the end of the cen- 

 tury he directed there mould be three common 

 years together, and has fixed the biflextile only 

 at the end of the fourth century : which makes 

 a difference with the true folar year of i hour and 

 20 minutes in 400 years, and confequently a 

 whole day in 7200 years. On the other hand, 

 the Gregorian year begins, in 400 years, always 

 three days fooner than the Julian year. This 

 difference had increafed, from the time of the 

 council of Nice to the pontificate of Gregory, to 

 io, and at the beginning of the prefent century, 



to 



