And, on the other hand, our readers cannot but have noticed how many a pertinent Note, suggestive Query, and apt Reply have reached us from the same remote quarters.
Our columns have, however, not only thus administered to the intellectual enjoyment of our brethren abroad, but they have rendered good service to men of letters here at home: and We could set forth a goodly list of works of learning and research—from Mr. Cunningham's Handbook of London Past and Present, published when we had been but a few months in existence, down to Wyclyffe's Three Treatises on the Church, recently edited by the Rev. Dr. Todd—in which the utility of "NOTES AND QUERIES" is publicly recognised in terms which are highly gratifying to us.
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And so, wishing ourselves many happy returns of this Centenary—and that you, Gentle Reader, may be spared to enjoy them, We bid you heartily Farewell!
Notes.
NOTE ON THE CALENDAR.
What every one learns from the almanac, over and above Easter and its consequences for the current year, is that what happens this year is no index at all to what will happen next year. And even those who preserve their almanacs, and compare them in long series, never have been able, so far as I know, to lay hands upon any law connecting the Easters of different years, without having had recourse to the very complicated law on which the whole calendar is constructed.
Nevertheless there does exist a simple relation which reduces the uncertainty in the proportion of five to two; so that by means of one past almanac, we may name two Sundays, one or the other of which must be Easter Sunday. I have never seen this relation noticed, though I have read much (for these days) on the calendar: has any one of your readers ever met with it?
Let us make a cycle of the days on which Easter day can fall, so that when we come to the last (April 25), we begin again at the first (March 22). Thus, six days in advance of April 23, comes March 25; seven days behind March 24, comes April 21.
The following is the rule, after which come two cases of exception:—