The story of the peasant-boy philosopher, or, "A child gathering pebbles on the sea-shore"; (founded on the early life of Ferguson, the shepherd-boy ... with the principles of natural science)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 Excerpt: ...June and December--as those days should, if the average year had been exact, and as history told them they used--why they'd wriggled themselves up to the other side of the middle of those months; that is to say, the time of the seasons had got out no less than ten days since the reckoning was altered. Accordingly another gentleman took the matter in hand, and he was Pope Gregory XIII. It's from him we have our present average sun-year, or Gregoricvrt year as they call it, in contradistinction to the JvMan one. Well, lad, Julius Caesar arranged that every year which was exactly divisible by 4 should consist of 366 days,.and all the others of 365; but Pope Gregory finding that this made the year too long by about one day in 129 years, settled to do with the hundredth years what Caesar had done with the other years; that is to say, he determined that only each 400th year should consist of 366 days, and every other hundredth year of merely 365 instead of 366, as all the hundredth years would have done according to the Julian arrangement--since everyone of them is capable of being divided by 4 without any remainder. So you see, boy, Pope Gregory shortened the average Julian year in this manner by three days in every 400 years." "Dear, dear, how clever!" "But Gregory didn't finish there, lad," continued the Captain; "for you know I told you the seasons had got about ten days ahead of their proper dates. Accordingly, he ordered that after the 4th of October, 1582, ten entire days should be struck out of that year, and that the dates should run on--not as usual the 4th of October, the 5th, 6th, and so forth--but jump right away from the 4th to the 15th. So you see, Owen, in the year 1582 there was really no 5th of October, nor a 6th, n...