88 Hutton Webster 



It is unnecessary, in this connection, to discuss fully the various 

 methods which have been employed to adjust the lunar year 

 to the tropic or seasonal year. One expedient is the counting of 

 thirteen lunar months to the year, a practice found among some 

 tribes of North America as well as in Polynesia, Siberia, and 

 Africa. ^^ A year of 13 lunar months gets even more quickly 

 out of harmony with the seasons and the course of the sun ; 

 hence arose the practice of intercalating the thirteenth month, 

 usually in every second or third year.^'' Familiar illustrations 

 are furnished by the Babylonians, Jews, and Greeks ; among 

 modern peoples by the natives of Burma, Siam, and China. The 

 methods of intercalation employed are historically numerous, 

 the details often obscure, and in no instance were the results 

 wholly successful. The difficulties arising from such attempts 

 to coordinate incommensurable periods must have been the 

 prime cause of the adoption of calendars in which the month, 

 instead of denoting the moon's synodic revolution, was given an 



May, July, and October having 31 days, and the rest 29, except February, 

 which had 28 days. All the months, therefore, had an odd number of 

 days, save February which was specially devoted to purification and the 

 cult of the dead. This peculiar arrangement of the months appears to 

 have been based on an old superstition that odd numbers are of good 

 omen, even numbers of ill omen (Fowler, Roman Festivals, 3; Th. 

 Mommsen, Die romischc Chronologie bis auf Caesar, Berlin, 1858, p. 13 ; 

 Marquardt-Wissowa, Romische Staaisvenualtung,' iii. 284). Possibly, the 

 choice of 355 days rather than 354 days as the length of the lunar year, 

 was dictated by similar considerations (L. Holzapfel, Romische Chrono- 

 logie, Leipzig, 1885, p. 281). 



^* The Thompson Indians of British Columbia grouped their lunar 

 months into five seasons, an arrangement which enabled them to bring the 

 lunar and tropic year into harmony, since they had an indefinite number 

 of unnamed months (Teit, in Memoirs of the American Museum of 

 Natwal History, ii. 239). Five seasons were familiar to the ancient 

 Hindus (Haug, Aitareya Brahmanam, ii. 6, 39). 



" The thirteenth or intercalary month, mentioned in the Rig Veda, bears 

 a distinctly unfavorable character, being regarded as unfit for any religious 

 undertaking (Haug, Aitareya Brahmanam, ii. 26). Among the Loango 

 negroes the thirteenth month, intercalated every three years, likewise is 

 regarded as an evil time (Pechuel-Loesche, in Die Loango-Expedition, 

 dritte Abteilung, erste Halfte, Stuttgart, 1907, pp. 138 sq.). 



