296 
superaiiiiierary day forms at the end of each indic-< 
l ion a small entire period^ and atlalpilli contains 
three hundred and sixty-five of these periods : 
that is^ as many weeks of thirteen days, as the 
year has civil days. A year of the ritual alma> 
nack has twenty half lunations^ or two hundred 
and sixty days, and this same number of days 
contains fifty-two half decades, or small periods 
of five days ; the Mexicans then found, in the 
concordance of these two reckonings of the 
Moon and the Sun, their favourite numbers of 
five, thirteen, twenty, and fifty-two. A cycle of 
fifty-two years contained one thousand four hun- 
dred and sixty small periods of thirteen days ; 
and, if to these we add thirteen intercalary days, 
we shall have one thousand four hundred and 
sixty- one small periods ; a number which acci- 
dentally coincides with that of the years consti- 
tuting the Sothiac period. 
The cycle of nineteen solar years, which cor- 
responds to two hundred and thirty-five luna- 
tions, and which the Chinese knew more than 
sixteen centuries before Meton finds its multi- 
ple neither in the cycle of sixty years, which is 
in use among the greater part of the nations of 
eastern Asia, and among the Muyscas of the 
elevated plain of Bogota ; nor in the cycle of 
fifty- two years, adopted by all the nations of the 
* La PlacCj Expos, tom. 2, p. 207, 
