Our Calendar / The Julian calendar and its errors. How corrected by the Gregorian. Rules for finding the dominical letter, and the day of the week of any event from the days of Julius Caesar 46 B.C. to the year of our Lord four thousand; a new and easy method of fixing the date of Easter. Hebrew calendar; showing the correspondence in the date of events recorded in the Bible with our present Gregorian calendar. Illustrated by valuable tables and charts.

by George Nichols Packer

F.—PAGE [26].

It has been stated that by adopting the Julian rule of intercalation, time was gained; it has also been stated that by the same rule time was lost. Now both are true. Time is gained in that there is too much time in a given year, in other words, the year is too long; but what is gained in a given year is lost to the following year.

As an illustration let us take the case of the supposed solar year of 365 days, and the civil year of 366. The civil year would gain one day every year, or be too long by one day; but the one day gained is lost to the following years, and if continued 31 years, when the Earth is in that part of its orbit marked the 1st day of January 32, the civil year would reckon the 1st day of December 31; so that in the thirty-one years would reckon thirty-one days too much, and before the civil year is completed, the Earth will have passed on in its orbit to a point marked the 1st day of February.

Now to reform such a calendar, we would have to suppress or drop the thirty-one days, by calling the 1st day of December the 1st day of January, and thus the month of December would disappear from the calendar in the year 31, making a year of only eleven months, consisting of 334 days.

If this method be continued 92 years, there would be gained 92 days, to the loss of 92 days in the year 92. If the calendar be now reformed by suppressing 92 days, calling the 1st day of October, 92, the 1st day of January, 93, then October, November and December would disappear from the calendar in the year 92; and if continued 365 years there would be crowded into 364 years, 364 days too much; gained to the 364 years to the total loss of the year 365, passing from 364 to 366; 365 disappearing from the calendar.

G.—PAGE [50].

An era is a fixed point of time from which a series of years is reckoned. Among the nations of the Earth there are no less than twenty-five different eras; but the most of them are not of enough importance to be mentioned here. Attention is particularly called to the Roman era which commenced with the building of the city of Rome 753 years before Christ.