THE USE OF LEAP YEAR

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 26.

THE USE OF LEAP YEAR.

THE following explanation is given why the year 1900 will not be counted among leap years: The year is 365 days, five hours, and forty-nine minutes long; eleven minutes are taken every year to make the year 365¼ days long, and every fourth year we have an extra day. This was Julius Cæsar's arrangement. Where do these eleven minutes come from? They come from the future, and are paid by omitting leap year every hundred years. But if leap year is omitted regularly every hundredth year, in the course of 400 years it is found that the eleven minutes taken each year will not only have been paid back, but that a whole day will have been given up. So Pope Gregory XIII., who improved on Cæsar's calendar in 1582, decreed that every centurial year divisible by four should be a leap year after all. So we borrow eleven minutes each year, more than paying our borrowing back by omitting three leap years in three centurial years, and square matters by having a leap year in the fourth centurial year. Pope Gregory's arrangement is so exact, and the borrowing and paying back balance so closely, that we borrow more than we pay back to the extent of only one day in 3,866 years.—Selected.