374 



APPENDIX. 



and four years, their century of fifty-two, their year of 

 eighteen months, their months of twenty days, their pe- 

 riods of thirteen years and thirteen days, their cycle of 

 two hundred and fixty days, and in particular their thir- 

 teen intercalary days, at the end of the century, to ad- 

 jufl the year with the courfe of the fun ? The Egyptians 

 were the greatefl: aftronomers of thofe remote times, but 

 they adopted no intercalary fpace to adjuft the year 

 with the annual retardation of the folar courfe. If the 

 Toltecas of themfelves difcovered that retardation, it is 

 not to be wondered at if they difcovered other things 

 which did not require fuch minute and prolix agronomi- 

 cal obfervations. Boturini, of whofe teflimony Ab. Her- 

 vas avails himfelf. fays exprefsly upon the faith of the 

 annals of the Toltecas, which he faw, that the ancient 

 aftronomers of that nation having obferved in their na- 

 tive country Huehuetlapallan, (a northern country of 

 America), the excefs of about fix hours of the folar, 

 over the civil year which was obferved among them, 

 corredled it by the ufe of intercalary days, more than one 

 hundred years before the Chrifiian era. With refpe6t 

 to the conformity between the Mexicans and Egyptians, 

 we fliall treat of it in our Differtations. 



Animadverfions of the Author on the Work entitled^ Let- 

 TERE Americane, or American Letters* 



Some of the obfervations made by Ab. Hervas have 

 alfo been made by the learned author of the American 

 Letters^ a work full of erudition, recently publiflied in 

 the Literary Magazine of Florence, and come to us at 

 the time the laft flieets of this volume were printing. 

 The author, in oppofmg the abfurd opinions of M. de 



Paw, 



