ix days. Every year of which the figure is divisible by four is a
leap-year. By adding a quarter day to each year, there is a surplus of
eleven minutes, fourteen seconds. These are subtracted every hundred
years by not taking as bissextile those secular years of which the
radical is not divisible by four. The year 1600 was leap-year: 1700,
1800, and 1900 were not; 2000 will be. The agreement between the
calendar and nature has thus been fairly perfect, since the
establishment of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582.

Since the terrestrial orbit measures not less than 930,000,000
kilometers (576,600,000 miles), which must be traversed in a year, the
Earth flies through Space at 2,544,000 kilometers (1,577,280 miles) a
day, or 106,000 kilometers (65,720 miles) an hour, or 29,500 meters (18
miles) per second on an average, a little faster at perihelion, a little
slower at aphelion. This giddy course, a thousand times more rapid than
the speed of an express-train, is effected without commotion, shock, or
noise. Reasoning alone enables us to divine the prodigious movement that
carries us along in the vast fields of the Infinite, in mid-heaven.

Returning to the calendar, it must be remarked in conclusion, that the
human race has not exhibited great sense in fixing the New Year on
January 1. No more disagreeable season could have been selected. And
further, as the ancient Roman names of the months have been preserved,
which in the time of Romulus began with March, the "seventh" month,
"September," is our ninth month; October (the eighth) is the tenth;
November (the ninth) has become the eleventh; and December (the tenth)
has taken the place of the twelfth. Verily, we are not hard to please!

These months, again, are unequal, as every one knows. Witness the
simple expedient of remembering the long and short months, by closing
the left hand and counting the knobs and hollows of the fist, the former
corresponding to the long months, the latter to the short: first knob =
January; first hollow, February; second knob, March; and so on.[12]

[Illustration: FIG. 63.--To find the long and short months.]

Should not the real renewal of the year coincide with the awakening of
Nature, with the spring on the terrestrial hemisphere occupied by the
greater portion of Humanity, with the date of March 21st? Should not the
months be equalized, and their names modified? Why should we not follow
the beautiful evolution dictated by the Sun and by th