260 NEW YEAR'S DAY AND THE CALENDAR 



they would (owing to the odd hours and minutes left 

 out) get about a day wrong in four years, and it was the 

 business of the priests even in ancient Rome the 

 pontiffs were charged with this duty to make the cor- 

 rection, add the missing day, and proclaim the chief 

 days of the year the shortest day, the longest day, and 

 the equinox-days of equal halves of sunshine and dark- 

 ness. In ancient China, if the State astronomer made 

 a wrong calculation in predicting an eclipse he was 

 decapitated. 



It is easy to understand how it became desirable to 

 recognise more convenient divisions of the year than the 

 four quarters marked by the solstices and the equinoxes. 

 Various astronomical events were studied, and their regular 

 recurrence ascertained, and they were used for this 

 purpose. But the most obvious natural timekeeper to 

 make use of, besides the sun, was the moon. The moon 

 completes its cycle of change on the average in 29^ days. 

 It was used by every man to mark the passage of the year, 

 and its periods from new moon to new moon were called, 

 as in our language, " months " or " moons," and divided 

 into quarters. It is, however, an awkward fact that 

 twelve lunar months give 354 days, so that there are 

 eleven days left over when the solar year is divided into 

 lunar months. The attempt to invent and cause the 

 adoption of a system which shall regularly mark out the year 

 into the popular and universally recognised "moons/' and 

 yet shall not make the year itself, so built up, of a length 

 which does not agree with the true year recorded by the 

 return of the rising sun to exactly the same spot on the 

 horizon after 365 days and a few hours, has been through- 

 out all the history of civilised man, and even among 

 prehistoric peoples, a matter of difficulty. It has led to 

 the most varied and ingenious systems, entrusted to the 

 most learned priests and state officers, and mostly so com- 



