@he Acientific Gugquivrer. 
MARCH, 1888. 
Interesting Data about the English 
Calendar.* 
By W. M. Bocart, Savannah, Georgia. 
HE “day on which the year of our Lord in the Church 
of England beginneth” is the designation of the 25th 
of March in the old English prayer-books ; and this, 
not in reference to the church year, for that began 
then as now with Advent, but meaning thereby the 
civil year. So recently was the change made from this day 
to January 1st—scarce a century and a quarter ago—that our 
great-grandfathers kept New Year’s Day on this Feast of the 
Annunciation, and for over four centuries previous in our Father- 
land Lady Day had ushered in the new year. 
The recurrence, then, of this 25th day of March, now simply 
a minor festival in the’calendar, but to our ancestors full of all the 
associations, religious and social, of a happy new year, suggests a 
short article on the civil calendar, and gives me an opportunity to 
say something of the changes in our modern year, and to explain 
one or two perplexing difficulties. 
The etymology of the Roman names of the months, retained 
in our own calendar, shows that March was their first month, 
because September, October, November, and December were 
respectively their seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months. 
Quintilis and Sextilis, the original names of July and August, 
testify to the same fact. I shall not dwell on the calendar of 
Julius Czesar, save to say that his reform substantially rectified 
the disorders of the then civil year, fixing its length at 3654 
days, and dividing it into twelve months, nearly as they exist 
now. The quarter-days, neglected yearly, were combined every 
* From Magazine of American History. 
VoL, III. 3 
