ITS EARLIEST STAGES. 133 



would begin a day too soon, when considered with 

 reference to the sun and stars ; and in 60 years it 

 would begin 15 days too soon, a quantity percep- 

 tible to the loosest degree of attention. The civil 

 year would be found not to coincide with the year 

 of the seasons ; the beginning of the former would 

 take place at different periods of the latter; it 

 would wander into various seasons, instead of re- 

 maining fixed to the same season; the term year, 

 and any number of years, would become ambi- 

 guous ; some correction, at least some comparison, 

 would be requisite. 



We do not know by whom the insufficiency of 

 the year of 365 days was first discovered 14 ; we 

 find this knowledge diffused among all civilized 

 nations, and various artifices used in making the 

 correction. The method which we employ, and 

 which consists in reckoning an additional day at 

 the end of February every fourth or leap year, is 

 an example of the principle of intercalation, by 

 which the correction was most commonly made. 

 Methods of intercalation for the same purpose were 

 found to exist in the new world. The Mexicans 

 added 13 days at the end of every 52 years. The 

 method of the Greeks was more complex; (by 

 means of the octaeteris or cycle of 8 years;) but 

 it had the additional object of accommodating itself 



14 Syncellus (Chronographia^ p. 123), says, that according to 

 the legend, it was King Aseth who first added the 5 additional 

 days to 360, for the year, in the eighteenth century B. c. 



