94 



THE KING'S MIRROR 



is quite low. At full moon the flood tide is again very 

 high and the ebb is strong. But when it has waned to 

 half, both ebb and flood are quite low. Merchants are, 

 however, scarcely able to note these changes, as the 

 course is too swift; for the moon takes such long strides 

 both in waxing and waning that men, on that account, 

 find it difficult to determine the divisions of its course. 

 The sun, on the other hand, completes its course more 

 slowly both in ascending and declining, so that one 

 'may easily mark all the stages of its course. [The sun 

 I moves upward one hundred and eighty-two and one- 

 half days and three hours and for a like period it recedes 

 again; it has then completed its entire course, both as- 

 cent and decline, in three hundred days, by the twelve- 

 count * [360], plus five days and six hours. Every fourth 

 year this becomes three hundred by the twelve-count 

 and six days more[366]; this is called leap year, for it 

 has one day more than the preceding twelvemonth, the 

 additional hours being gathered into twenty-four, a 

 night and a day Jin Latin all hundreds are counted by 

 tens, and there are, therefore, properly computed three 

 hundred by the ten-count plus sixty-six days whenever 

 leap year occurs, while the intervening years have only 

 five days and six hours with as many additional days by 

 the other reckoning as I have just stated. 



But to your question concerning the growth of the 

 sun's path, how one can most clearly discern it, I can 

 scarcely give an answer so precise as not to be wrong 

 in part; for the sun's path does not wax at the same 



* The Northmen in medieval times had two hundreds, the great hundred, or 

 duodecimal hundred, which counted 120 (12 X 10) and the ordinary hundred 

 (10 X 10). 



