1880 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
109 
BIBLICAL ENIGMA. 
The whole, composed of forty letters, is good advice, 
from a good book. 
The i, 17, 13, 31, 6, 37, 24, 40, was a famous well, near 
Gerar. 
The 11,18, 8, 27, 21, 10, 6, 2, is a place where clothing 
is kept. 
The 15, 29, 1, 7, 9, 22, 3S, 30, was a Governor of Syria. 
The 18, 3, 26, 12, 34. 36, 30, 19, was a precious stone in 
the liigh-priest’s breast-plate. 
The 30, 35, 15, 28, 5, 20, 8, 4, is a tree, common in 
Palestine. 
The 32, 10, 38, 23, 33, 28, 2, 9, is a spring of water. 
The 39, 25, 14, 18,12, 22,16, 23, was a city of Asia Minor. 
BLANK ANAGRAMS. 
(Transpose the italicised words in a sentence, into one 
word with which to fill the blank in the same sentence, 
and complete the sense. Example .—I want a cup of tea, 
and Emily made it -[immediately].) 
1. Our-had to cross a bridge. 
2. Mamie's Bath suffers with-. 
3. Arlim nut oil was used as an-. 
4. Old Gartia was a Roman-•. 
5. More shapes. Tom ? Well, I never saw such-. 
6. O ! more bustle ! How very-. 
7. Even men do sometimes speak with-tongues. 
8. When we got there we found them-. 
NUMERICAL ENIGMA. 
I am composed of 10 letters : 
My 3, 4, is a pronoun. 
My 5, 9, 6, is another. 
My 5,1, 2, 7, is an animal. 
My 6, 1.8, 10, 5, is a very important household article. 
My whole is a very useful study. B. F. O. 
ANSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE JANUARY NUMBER. 
Added Heads.— 1. Imp—grimp 2. ltove—grove. 3. Edge 
—hedge. 4. Awl— bawl 5. Ear—bear. 6. Race—Grace. 
Storekeeper’s Puzzle.— PAT UP; first and last letter 
P. P (peas); 2d letter A (anaconda), 3d letter Y (Your in¬ 
itial): 4th letter (J (U. S. Grant). 
Fig. 6.—THE BOY ON THE HORSE. 
ANAGRAMS. 
1. Light may cool 
2. For tin pieces. 
3. Dire ration. 
4. Ice funnels. 
5. But a last sin. 
SYNCOPATIONS. 
Five letters show, if placed aright, 
What many a horse does in the light ; 
Abstract one letter, and you’ve got 
A bond of union, break it not. 
Again a letter take and see 
A liquid used by you and me. 
Once more, and if the lady’s that, 
Pray make your call, take off your hat. 
CONCEALED ARTICLES WHICH MAY BE FOUND ON A FARM. 
1. Give me a token, Nellie, by which to remember you. 
2. George, has Pa decided to buy the mare ? 
3. The horse has lost a shoe. 
4. Get Peler a key for his trunk. 
5. The buds are swelling in the sunshine. 
6. This hovel might as well be torn down. 
7. Pa, I like maple sugar. 
8. Ben, Charlie wants you. 
9. John’s tools are in the woodshed. 
TRANSPOSITIONS. 
(Fill the second blank with the same word which fills 
the first blank, transposed.) 
1. I asked the—-to-a piece off of one of his loaves. 
2. My-could not-the temptation. 
3. He won the-but he was——for life. 
DOUBLE ACROSTIC. 
The finals form the definition of the intials. 
1. An edible. 5. A director. 
2. *Dark. 6. A European town. 
3. A town in Europe. 7. A lake. 
4. Part of a shield. 8. Small. Nip. 
DROP-LETTER WORDS. 
1. —m—r—s—n— e—t. 4. —i—c—m—t— n—e. 
2. —a—e—o—e—t. 5. —a—d—c—p—s. 
3. —o—s—e—n—t—o—. 6. —n—o—g—n—a—. 
WORDS ENIGMATICALLY EXPRESSED. 
(Example. —Man-of-war in a hurricane. Nightingale 
[Knight-in-gale].) 
1. Cut our hair. 4. Benevolent color. 
2. Part noun. 5. Furnish a century. 
3. A remote article. 6. A number of grandees. 
6. Tea-urn fount. 
7. E’en singer. 
8. O 11 bit Missie’slip. 
9. Brighten any. 
10. Fool’s crime. 
Double acrostic. 
Napoleon—Waterloo. 
N— arro —W 
A— ltoon —A 
P— enobsco —T 
O— b -E 
L— ancaste —R 
E— scuria — L 
O— rinoc — O 
N—ew Mex c—O 
Pi.—He who minds not his 
trusted with other people’s. 
Concealed Birds.— 1. Lin¬ 
net. 2. Wren. 3. Dove. 4. 
He Von. 5. Kite. G.-Owl. 7. 
Hen. 8. Crow. 9. Thrush. 
Anagrams.— 1. Beforehand. 
2. Subordinates. 3. Intemper¬ 
ance. 4. Biographical. 5. In¬ 
offensive. 6. Incidental. 7. 
Deficient. 8. Obituaries. 9. 
Bituminous. 10. Cylindrical, 
own business, is not fit to be 
Alphabetical Arithmetic. —7208)5631904(781. (Key.— 
Profitable.) 
Biblical Numerical Enigma.—A nd let us not be weary 
in well doing. 
The Pile of Winter Wood, that was given in 
the January number proved to be of even greater interest 
to the young people than we anticipated. Answers from 
a number of boys and girls have been received with the 
correct and entire list. For the benefit of those who may 
have had some trouble, we give the list of woods in the 
pile. (1) Locust, (2) Fir, (3) Hemlock, (4) Elm, (5) Dog¬ 
wood, (6) Beech, (7) Pine, (8) Willow, (9) Basswood, (10) 
Scrnb-oak, (11) Birch, (12) Buckeye, (13) Cypress, (14) 
Walnut, (15) Maple, (16) Chestnut. With the list before 
you it will not be difficult to select the picture that re¬ 
presents each one of the kinds of wood mentioned above. 
Answer to the Bean Pnzzle.— The accom¬ 
panying engraving makes the matter plain to all those 
who had trouble in putting iu the four extra beans, and 
yet not increase the num¬ 
ber of rows or number in 
each row. It will be ob¬ 
served, by referring to the 
January number, that 
there were two beans at 
each corner, while here 
there is only one. The 
corner beans are counted 
twice, and by removing 
one from each corner to the 
middle the count stands 
No. 474 Illustrated Rebus.— Something 
all persons ought, and may here study, to know. 
five for each row and al¬ 
lows an extra bean to be pnt in with the three already in 
the middle to make the six ; the requirements of the prob¬ 
lem are met, and what was once puzzling is now all clear. 
This Is Leap Year—Why? 
When the number of the year is divisible by four it is 
Leap Year, and such is the case with 1880. Just about 
the time, this, the March, number of the American Agri¬ 
culturist reaches its readers, perhaps while thousands of 
boys and girls are looking over its pages, and even read¬ 
ing this very article, it will be the 29th of February—the 
Leap Year Day, that comes only once in four years. Near¬ 
ly a year ago we saw a little girl then about three years 
old who had never had an anniversary of her birthday; 
hut this year she will have one, and we hope it will be 
big enough to make up for all the misfortunes of being 
born on the 29th of the shortest month of the year. 
“Leap Year,” we have been told, “is an odd year;” 
but it has just been shown that it is altogethergpen. Why 
is it odd? we may ask, and the reply comes, “It is the 
year when the boys are girls and the girls are boys, and 
everything is turned around.” 01 yes, we begin to see 1 
They have “leap year parties,” and “leap year rides,” 
and “ leap year this and that,” and the girls do the in 
viting, and driving, and managing, and many of the 
“company ” things which the boys claim for their own 
on other and ordinary years. It is said that such matters 
are sometimes even carried so far that the young lady 
proposes to the young gentleman of her choice, and he 
has the privilege of accepting or refusing as he sees fit. 
Well 1 we will admit it is an odd year, though it is even 
all the same. But why do we have leap years ? There 
must be some good reason for adding one day to every 
fourth year as it comes around to us. What is it? 
The earth moves around the sun once a year, as you all 
have learned from your geography. The time required 
for the earth to pass around and return to the place from 
which it started is called a solar or sun year—the year 
made by the heavenly bodies. In olden times, men did 
not know that the earth moved around the sun. If there 
was any moving it was done by the sun they thought; 
Fig. 1.— sliding.— (See next page.) 
and it did seem to move. To this day we all say the sun 
rises and sets. Knowing so little about the revolution of 
the earth, it was very hard for men to arrange the di¬ 
visions of time so that they would correspond with the 
solar year. The civil year is the one made by man, and, 
like many human tilings, it was at first very imperfect— 
that is, the civil year and solar year did not correspond 
very closely. In the time of Julius Caesar, the two kinds 
of years had got so out of place that the spring of the 
civil year came in midsummer. To use an illustration, 
we will have two cog wheels that work into cacli other. 
If both wheels are in all respects alike, the same places 
will always come together at each revolution; hut sup¬ 
pose one wheel is a trifle smaller than the other, the 
wheel representing the civil year smaller than the one 
of the solar year, then any points once together will keep 
getting farther apart. This was just the trouble between 
man’s year and the natural year. Caesar rearranged the 
civil year in 46 Before Christ, and introduced the system 
of having three years of 365 days and then one of 366—the 
additional day being given to February. The solar year 
is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 49>£ seconds, so that 
Caesar’s year of 365)^ days, averaging the four, is about 11 
minutes too long. The point is to get these two years ; 
the year of the heavens which we can not alter, and tho 
year of the almanacs to agree. Matters went on as they 
had been started by Julius Cmsar, witli a loss of 11 
minutes a year until 1582, over sixteen hundred years, 
when it became evident that the little yearly loss was too 
great and must be remedied. How could this be done 
was the question, At this time a Pope took the matter 
up—it was a time when Popes had great temporal power 
—and decreed that the fifth of October he called the 15th, 
and all the intervening days to be cancelled. This only 
set matters right for the time being, but the same Pope, 
Gregory XIII, made it a rule that the century years not 
divisible by eight be not leap years. Thus 1700, 1800, 
and 1900 are not leap years, according to the new rule. 
This omits three leap years in every 400 years. With 
this arrangement the civil and solar years almost coincide. 
Fig. 2. — the rounded board. —(See next page.) 
the solar, exceeding by only 22 H seconds, or a day in 
about 4,000 years—a matter too small to need attention. 
Those who have followed us through, and we fear it 
has been rather dry for the younger readers, will see that 
it has been quite a hard matter to bring things around 
straight. The leap year comes from the fact that there is 
a fraction of a day in the solar year which it would not 
be convenient to have in the civil, so we put enough of 
the fractions together to make a day and have file extra 
one on the leap year, which comes every fourth year. 
