152 THE MAYFLY. 



backward, one may perhaps put the usual date 

 two days earlier. Even this makes good the 

 misnomer by placing the mayfly festival in the 

 month of June. 



THE ELEVEN DAYS. 



Of course we are all supposed to know about 

 the change in the calendar from Old Style to 

 New Style, and the consternation it caused by 

 the loss of the eleven days. Well, equally of 

 course, we all do not. I, for one, had forgotten 

 about it, but I have now ' read it up/ so 

 cannot resist giving my rehash of this educa- 

 tional morsel. 



Scotland, it appears, changed its calendar in 

 the year 1600, but sleepy old England waited 

 for another hundred and fifty years before she 

 made the reform ; just as she may wait another 

 hundred and fifty before she adopts a decimal 

 coinage system, such as Ceylon enjoyed long 

 before I used to live there. Russia, as we 

 know, still keeps to the Old Style, so is now I 

 suppose some thirteen days wrong, by not 

 omitting the leap years at the beginning of 

 1800, and 1900. 



The change was made here in London in the 

 autumn of 1752, by the suppression of all the 

 days between September 2nd and September 

 I4th; which caused such a commotion among 

 the ignorant, that they petitioned the Government 

 to * give us back our eleven days/ 



Well, it is interesting to note how the dates 

 of seasons and festivals differ between the time 



