Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/739

was inserted in the calendar between the 24th and 25th day. February having then twenty-nine days, the 25th was the 6th of the calends of March, sexto calendas; the preceding, which was the additional or intercalary day, was called bis-sexto calendas,—hence the term bissextile, which is still employed to distinguish the year of 366 days. The English denomination of leap-year would have been more appropriate if that year had differed from common years in defect, and contained only 364 days. In the ecclesiastical calendar the intercalary day is still placed between the 24th and 25th of February; in the civil calendar it is the 29th.

The regulations of Cæsar were not at first sufficiently understood; and the pontiffs, by intercalating every third year instead of every fourth, at the end of thirty-six years had intercalated twelve times, instead of nine. This mistake having been discovered, Augustus ordered that all the years from the thirty-seventh of the era to the forty- eighth inclusive should be common years, by which means the intercalations were reduced to the proper number of twelve in forty-eight years. No account is taken of this blunder in chronology; and it is tacitly supposed that the calendar has been correctly followed from its commencement.

Although the Julian method of intercalation is perhaps the most convenient that could be adopted, yet, as it supposes the year too long by 11 minutes 14 seconds, it could not without correction very long answer the purpose for which it was devised, namely, that of preserving always the same interval of time between the commencement of the year and the equinox. Sosigenes could scarcely fail to know that this year was too long; for it had been shown long before, by the observations of Hipparchus, that the excess of 3651/4 days above a true solar year would amount to a day in 300 years. The real error is indeed more than double of this, and amounts to a day in 128 years; but in the time of Cæsar the length of the year was an astronomical element not very well determined. In the course of a few centuries, however, the equinox sensibly retrograded towards the beginning of the year. When the Julian calendar was introduced, the equinox fell on the 25th of March. At the time of the Council of Nice, which was held in 325, it fell on the 21st; and when the reformation of the calendar was made in 1582, it had retrograded to the 11th. In order to restore the equinox to its former place, Pope Gregory XIII. directed ten days to be suppressed in the calendar; and as the error of the Julian intercalation was now found to amount to three days in 400 years, he ordered the intercalations to be omitted on all the centenary years excepting those which are multiples of 400. According to the Gregorian rule of intercalation, therefore, every year of which the number is divisible by four without a remainder, is a leap year, excepting the centurial years, which are only leap years when divisible by four after omitting the two ciphers. Thus 1600 was a leap year, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 are common years; 2000 will be a leap year, and so on.

As the Gregorian method of intercalation has been adopted in all Christian countries, Russia excepted, it becomes interesting to examine with what degree of accuracy it reconciles the civil with the solar year. According to the best determinations of modern astronomy (Le Verrier's Solar Tables, Paris, 1858, p. 102), the mean geocentric motion of the sun in longitude, from the mean equinox during a Julian year of 365·25 days, the same being brought up to the present date, is 360° + 27″ ·685. Thus the mean length of the solar year is found to be 360°/360° + 27″ ·685 × 365·25 = 365·2422 days, or 365 days 5 hours 48 min. 46 sec. Now the Gregorian rule gives 97 intercalations in 400 years; 400 years therefore contain 365 × 400 + 97, that is, 146,097 days; and consequently one year contains 365·2425 days, or 365 days 5 hours 49 min. 12 sec. This exceeds the true solar year by 26 seconds, which amount to a day in 3323 years. It is perhaps unnecessary to make any formal provision against an error which can only happen after so long a period of time; but as 3323 differs little from 4000, it has been proposed to correct the Gregorian rule by making the year 4000 and all its multiples common years. With this correction the rule of intercalation is as follows:—

Every year the number of which is divisible by 4 is a leap year, excepting the last year of each century, which is a leap year only when the number of the century is divisible by 4; but 4000, and its multiples, 8000, 12,000, 16,000, &c. are common years. Thus the uniformity of the intercalation, by continuing to depend on the number four, is preserved, and by adopting the last correction the commencement of the year would not vary more than a day from its present place in two hundred centuries.

In order to discover whether the coincidence of the civil and solar year could not be restored in shorter periods by a different method of intercalation, we may proceed as follows:—The fraction 0·2422, which expresses the excess of the solar year above a whole number of days, being converted into a continued fraction, becomes

1
4	+	1
		7	+	1
				1	+	1
						3	+	1
								4	+	1
										1	+,	&c.

which gives the series of approximating fractions,

1/4,

7/29,

8/33,

31/128,

132/545,

163/673,

&c.

The first of these, 1/4, gives the Julian intercalation of one day in four years, and is considerably too great. It supposes the year to contain 365 days 6 hours.

The second, 7/29, gives seven intercalary days in twenty-nine years, and errs in defect, as it supposes a year of 365 days 5 hours 47 min. 35 sec.

The third, 8/33, gives eight intercalations in thirty-three years, or seven successive intercalations at the end of four years respectively, and the eighth at the end of five years. This supposes the year to contain 365 days 5 hours 49 min. 5·45 sec.

The fourth fraction, 31/128 = 24 + 7/99 + 29 = 3 × 8 + 7/3 × 33 + 29, combines three periods of thirty-three years with one of twenty-nine, and would consequently be very convenient in application. It supposes the year to consist of 365 days 5 hours 48 min. 45 sec., and is practically exact.

The fraction 8/33 offers a convenient and very accurate method of intercalation. It implies a year differing in excess from the true year only by 19·45 seconds, while the Gregorian year is too long by 26 seconds. It produces a much nearer coincidence between the civil and solar years than the Gregorian method; and, by reason of its shortness of period, confines the evagations of the mean equinox from the true within much narrower limits. It has been stated by Scaliger, Weidler, Montucla, and others, that the modern Persians actually follow this method, and intercalate eight days in thirty-three years. The statement has, however, been contested on good authority; and it seems proved (see Delambre, Astronomie Moderne, tom. i. p. 81) that the Persian intercalation combines the two periods 7/29 and 8/33. If they follow the combination 7 + 3 x 8/29 + 3 x 33 = 31/128, their determination of the length of the tropical year has been extremely exact. The discovery of the period of thirty-three years is ascribed to Omar Cheyam, one of the eight astronomers appointed by Gelal-Eddin Malech Shah, sultan of Khorassan, to reform or construct a calendar, about the year 1079 of our era.

If the commencement of the year, instead of being retained at the same place in the seasons by a uniform method of intercalation, were made to depend on astronomical phenomena, the intercalations would succeed each other in an irregular manner, sometimes after four years and sometimes after five; and it would occasionally, though rarely indeed, happen, that it would be impossible to determine the day on which the year ought to begin. In the calendar, for example, which was attempted to be introduced in France in 1793, the beginning of the year was fixed at the midnight preceding the day in which the true autumnal equinox falls. But supposing the instant of the sun's entering into the sign Libra to be very near midnight, the small errors of the solar tables might render it doubtful to which day the equinox really belonged; and it would be in vain to have recourse to observation to obviate the difficulty. It is therefore infinitely more commodious to determine the commencement