OF THE REFORMATION

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conds, and the time the fun takes to move fromone of the solstitial points to the fame pointagain, is three hundred and sixty-five days, fivehours, forty-eight minutes, and forty-nine se-conds ; it is evident, that this computation, al-though it agreed tolerably well with the courseof the moon, must yet have been extremelydefective, the difference between the lunar yearand the true solar year, being more than elevendays.

The irregularities which such a mode ofreckoning would occasion, must have been tooobvious not to have been noted. For, supposingit to have been settled, at any particular time,that the beginning of the year should be in thespring; in about sixteen years afterwards, thebeginning would have been in autumn ; and inthirty-three, or thirty-four years, it would havegone backwards, through all the seasons, tospring again. This defect, however, they at-tempted to rectify, by introducing a number ofdays at certain times into the calendar, as occa-sion required, and putting the beginning of theyear forwards, in order to make it agree withthe course of the sun. But as these intercala-tions were generally consigned to the care of thepriests, who, from motives of interest or super-stition, frequently omitted them, the year wasmade long or short at pleasure, and the calendarwas yet in a very imperfect state.

Several