206 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1849. Diagram II. shows how, according to the well-known Roman 



mode of counting, the edict of Augustus in 8, there shall be no 

 leap-year for twelve years, would be accounted to make +4 leap- 

 year. If a man had been sentenced on Monday evening to six 

 days' imprisonment, he would have been let out on Saturday 

 morning. This seems to me to explain how we may reckon 

 intervals from our January 1 45, but from thence to +4 inter- 

 vals must be corrected, though not after. The dates 45 and 



8 are well fixed by the consuls being named. 



The general impression is that the first of Caesar's years, 



45, itself was his bissextile. This seems to me absurd. 

 Caesar did not care about equinoxes. All he wanted was to 

 keep an average of 365J, and correcting before the error had 

 accrued would surely never have struck him or Sosigeues. 



Moreover, the preceding theory accounts for 4w, and shows 

 how the new moon may be made to fall where we know it did. 



Yours truly, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



To the Rev. Wm. Heald. 



DEAR HEALD, .... Talking of curious powers, tell me 

 what you think of the following story. It quite beats me. 



I have seen a good deal of mesmerism, and have tried it my- 

 self on for the removal of ailments which required much 



medicine, but which mesmerism met without medicine from the 

 time it was employed. Of the curative powers of this agent I 

 have no more doubt than one has of things which he has con- 

 stantly seen for years. But this is not the point. I had fre- 

 quently heard of the thing they call clairvoyance, and had been 

 assured of the occurrence of it in my own house, but always 

 considered it as a thing of which I had no evidence direct or 

 personal, and which I could not admit till such evidence came. 



One evening I dined at a house about a mile from my own 

 a house in which my wife had never been at that time. I left 

 it at half-past ten, and was in my own house at a quarter to 

 eleven. At my entrance my wife said to me, ' We have been after 

 you,' and told me that a little girl whom she mesmerised for 

 epileptic fits (and who left her cured), and of whose clairvoyance 

 she had told me other instances, had been desired in the mes- 

 meric state to follow me to Street, to 's house. The 



thing took place at a few minutes after ten. On hearing the 

 name of the street the girl's mother said, 



