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according to the orders of the Emperors and Consuls, andby other ways in use with the people among whom theylived. Anderson, in his History of Commerce, asserts thatthe Emperor Justinian was the first who, about the year 533,sanctioned this y£ra ; but it was not followed in Germany orFrance , till the reign of the Emperor Charles the Great , in thecommencement of the ninth century, nor in Spain , till afterthe expulsion of the Saracens in the fifteenth century.

In England, this method of computation seems to havebeen practised soon after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons by St. Augustin, and is first noticed by the Venerable Bede ,in his ecclesiastical history, written in the year 731. Untilthe conquest by the Normans , the year was presumed tobegin from the birth of our Saviour, but after the con-quest, no settled period for the commencement of the yearseems to have been determined upon, it being sometimesstated by our early historical writers as commencing on thebirth, and at other times on the conception of our Saviour jabout the middle of the fifteenth century, the method ofbeginning the year from Lady-day appears to have been themost common, and to have prevailed until the year 1752,when the Gregorian Calendar , altering the commencementof the year to the first of January, was established by Act ofParliament, though in foreign mercantile transactions theOld Style is in many instances continued. (See Year.}

The Epocha of the Hedjira commences on the 16th of July,the day of Mahomet’s flight from Mecca to Medina, A. D.6^2, and is used by all who profess the Mahometan faith,having been introduced by Omar the third Emperor of theTurks j this year consists of but twelve lunar months.

.®TNA. The first volcanic eruption from this mountainis that mentioned by Diodorus Siculus , which compelled theSicani to relinquish the eastern coast of Sicily , but the exacttime is not known ; the second, according to Eusebius ,

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