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Updated: August 17, 2024
THAT these and other the horrors and dangers with which the said Bissextile, or Leap Year, threatens the gentlemen of England on every occasion of its periodical return, have been greatly aggravated and augmented by the terms of Her Majesty’s said Most Gracious communication, which have filled the heads of divers young ladies in this Realm with certain new ideas destructive to the peace of mankind, that never entered their imagination before.
"Because February, at that time, was reckoned the last month of the year. It was only in the reign of Charles IX. of France, or in the second half of the sixteenth century, that the civil year was made to begin on the 1st of January. Hence the fourth year is termed in the calendar bissextile, but is more usually called by us in England leap year."
Yet such was the prevalence of ancient superstition, that a whole day was voluntarily added to this dangerous interval, because it happened to be the intercalation of the Bissextile.
They divided the year into eighteen months of twenty days each; but, as this gave the year only three hundred and sixty days, five supplementary days were added to each year, and a sixth day to every fourth year. The bissextile is known to have been used by the Mayas, Tzendals, and Quichés, and it was probably common.
'Tis said that this regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till we had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear: and yet, by this means, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might be always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above four-and-twenty hours in our computation.
I refer you to Montucla, if you have any doubt about the Egyptian year being of 365 days without bissextile of any kind. I had sent a copy of the "Mechanism of the Heavens" to M. Poisson soon after it was published, and I had received a letter from him dated 30th May, 1832, advising me to complete the work by writing a volume on the form and rotation of the earth and planets.
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