The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1880-05-21
b Concerning Leap Year.

The american Agricuuurist gives Che
following account of why leap year
comes once In four years: The earth
moves around the sun once n year, as
you all have learned from your geog-
raphy. The time required for the earth
10 pass around and return to the place
from which it started is called solar
or sun year-the year made by the
heavenly bodies. In olden times men
did not know that the earth moved
around the sun. If there was any NOV
ing It was done by the sun, they thought;
and 1t did seem to move. To this day
we all say the sun rises and sets. Know
ing so little about the revolutions of the
earth, It was very hard for men to ar
range the divisions of time 90 that they
would correspond with the solar year.
The civil year is the one made by man,
and, like many human things, it was at
first very imperfect-that is, the civil
year and solar year did not correspond
very closely. In the time of Julius
Caesar, the two kinds of years had got
so out of place that the spring of the
civil year came in midsummer. To use
an illustration, we will have two cog
wheels that work into each other. IL
both wheels are in all respects alike,
the places will always come together at
each revolution; but suppose one wheel
is tride smaller than the other. the
wheel representing the civil year smaller
than the one of the solar year, then any
points once together will keep getting
further apart. This was just the trouble
between mans year and the natural
year. Cesar rearranged the civil year
in 46 before Christ, and introduced the
system having three years of 365 days
ND tb f Ia ii
being giving to February. The solar
year is 1865 days. hours, 48 minutes and
59a seconds, so that Cnsar's year of 365t
days, averaging the four, is about eleven
minutes too long. The point is to get
these two years, the year of the heavens
which we cannot alter, and the year OF
the almanacs, to agree. Matters went
on as they had been started by Julius
Cesar, with loss OF eleven minutes a
yenr, until 1852, over 600 years, when
it became evident that the little yearly
loss was too great and must be remedied.
How could this be done. was the ques-
ton. At this time pope took the mat
ter up-it was time when popes had
great temporal power and decreed that
the filth OF October be called the 18th,
and all the intervening days to be can
celed. This only set matters right for
the time being, but the same pope,
Gregory Kill, made it a rule that the
century years not divisible by eight be
not leap years, according to the new
rule. This omits three leap years in
every 400 years. With this arrangement
the civil and solar years almost coincide,
the solar exceeding by only twenty-five
and One-quarter seconds, or day
in about 1000 years-a matter too small
to need attention.
Those who have followed us through,
and we fear ii has been rather dry for
the younger readers. will see that IL has
been quite hard matter to bring things
around straight The leap year comes
from the fact that there is fraction of
a day in the solar year which it would
not be convenient to have in the civil,
so we put enough of the fractions to-
gether to make n day, and have the
extra one on the leap year, or very
fourth year.