The etymology of the word Caledonia has been variously given. Celydd (in Welsh, a woody shelter) is the popular derivation; but Isaac Taylor (Words and Places, p. 44) thinks the word may possibly contain the root gael, and if so, the Caledonians would be the Gaels of the duns or hills. Equally obscure are the ethnological relations of the people, the most probable opinion being that which regards them as belonging to the British branch of the great Celtic family. A casual inference, hazarded by Tacitus (Agricola, chap. xi.), that the red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia point clearly to a German origin, must not be pressed too far. There were probably even in his day Teutonic settlements along our eastern and northern shores, but it seems too much to assume that that race was the dominant one north of the Forth. It is a still more doubtful question to what race the Picts belonged. But the discussion of these and other points belongs to the history of Scotland (q.v.) (See Claudii Ptolemæi Geographia, ed. Wilberg, Essendiæ, 1838; Roy's Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain, London, 1793; Burton's History of Scotland, vol. i., Edin. 1867.)
CALENBERG, or Kalenberg, a former principality of Hanover, which was traversed by the Weser and the Leine, and had an area of about 1050 square miles. It derived its name from an ancient castle, now in ruins. In the Middle Ages it belonged to Lüneburg, and after passing from one branch to another of the house of Brunswick, it came, in 1705, to Ernst August, electoral prince of Hanover.
CALENDAR
A CALENDAR is a method of distributing time into certain periods adapted to the purposes of civil life, as hours, days, weeks, months, years, &c.
Of all the periods marked out by the motions of the celestial bodies, the most conspicuous, and the most intimately connected with the affairs of mankind, are the solar day, which is distinguished by the diurnal revolution of the earth and the alternation of light and darkness, and the solar year, which completes the circle of the seasons. But in the early ages of the world, when mankind were chiefly engaged in rural occupations, the phases of the moon must have been objects of great attention and interest,—hence the month, and the practice adopted by many nations of reckoning time by the motions of the moon, as well as the still more general practice of combining lunar with solar periods. The solar day, the solar year, and the lunar month, or lunation, may therefore be called the natural divisions of time. All others, as the hour, the week, and the civil month, though of the most ancient and general use, are only arbitrary and conventional.
Day.—The true solar day is the interval of time which elapses between two consecutive returns of the same terrestrial meridian to the sun. By reason of the inclined position of the ecliptic, and the unequal progressive motion of the earth in its orbit, it is not always of the same absolute length. But as it would be hardly possible, in the artificial measurement of time, to have regard to this small inequality which is besides constantly varying, the mean solar day is employed for all civil purposes. This is the time in which the earth would make one revolution on its axis, as compared with the sun, if the earth moved at an equable rate in the plane of the equator. The mean solar day is therefore a result of computation, and is not marked precisely by any astronomical phenomenon; but its difference from the true solar or apparent day is so small as to escape ordinary observation.
The subdivision of the day into twenty-four parts, or hours, has prevailed since the remotest ages, though different nations have not agreed either with respect to the epoch of its commencement or the manner of distributing the hours. Europeans in general, like the ancient Egyptians, place the commencement of the civil day at midnight, and reckon twelve morning hours from midnight to mid-day, and twelve evening hours from mid-day to midnight. Astronomers, after the example of Ptolemy, regard the day as commencing with the sun's culmination, or noon, and find it most convenient for the purposes of computation to reckon through the whole twenty-four hours. Hipparchus reckoned the twenty-four hours from midnight to midnight. Some nations, as the ancient Chaldeans and the modern Greeks, have chosen sunrise for the commencement of the day; others, again, as the Italians and Bohemians, suppose it to commence at sunset. In all these cases the beginning of the day varies with the seasons at all places not under the equator. In the early ages of Rome, and even down to the middle of the 5th century after the foundation of the city, no other divisions of the day were known than sunrise, sunset, and mid-day, which was marked by the arrival of the sun between the Rostra and a place called Græcostasis, where ambassadors from Greece and other countries used to stand. The Greeks divided the natural day and night into twelve equal parts each, and the hours thus formed were denominated temporary hours, from their varying in length according to the seasons of the year. The hours of the day and night were of course only equal at the time of the equinoxes. The whole period of day and night they called νυχθήμερον.
