In order to simplify the calendar, this accumulating fraction of five hours, forty-eight minutes, forty-six seconds (about a quarter day) is added every four years to a bissextile year (leap-year), and thus we have uneven years of three hundred and sixty-five, and three hundred and sixty-six days. Every year of which the figure is divisible by four is a leap-year. By adding a quarter day to each year, there is a surplus of eleven minutes, fourteen seconds. These are subtracted every hundred years by not taking as bissextile those secular years of which the radical is not divisible by four. The year 1600 was leap-year: 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not; 2000 will be. The agreement between the calendar and nature has thus been fairly perfect, since the establishment of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582.
Since the terrestrial orbit measures not less than 930,000,000 kilometers (576,600,000 miles), which must be traversed in a year, the Earth flies through Space at 2,544,000 kilometers (1,577,280 miles) a day, or 106,000 kilometers (65,720 miles) an hour, or 29,500 meters (18 miles) per second on an average, a little faster at perihelion, a little slower at aphelion. This giddy course, a thousand times more rapid than the speed of an express-train, is effected without commotion, shock, or noise. Reasoning alone enables us to divine the prodigious movement that carries us along in the vast fields of the Infinite, in mid-heaven.
Returning to the calendar, it must be remarked in conclusion, that the human race has not exhibited great sense in fixing the New Year on January 1. No more disagreeable season could have been selected. And further, as the ancient Roman names of the months have been preserved, which in the time of Romulus began with March, the "seventh" month, "September," is our ninth month; October (the eighth) is the tenth; November (the ninth) has become the eleventh; and December (the tenth) has taken the place of the twelfth. Verily, we are not hard to please!
These months, again, are unequal, as every one knows. Witness the simple expedient of remembering the long and short months, by closing the left hand and counting the knobs and hollows of the fist, the former corresponding to the long months, the latter to the short: first knob = January; first hollow, February; second knob, March; and so on.[12]
Fig. 63.—To find the long and short months.
Should not the real renewal of the year coincide with the awakening of Nature, with the spring on the terrestrial hemisphere occupied by the greater portion of Humanity, with the date of March 21st? Should not the months be equalized, and their names modified? Why should we not follow the beautiful evolution dictated by the Sun and by the movement of our planet? But our poor Earth may roll on a long time yet before its inhabitants will become reasonable.