A satisfactory reform of the calendar was finally effected by Julius Caesar during the short period of his supremacy at Rome, under the advice of an Alexandrine astronomer _Sosigenes_. The error in the calendar had mounted up to such an extent, that it was found necessary, in order to correct it, to interpolate three additional months in a single year (46 B.C.), bringing the total number of days in that year up to 445. For the future the year was to be independent of the moon; the ordinary year was to consist of 365 days, an extra day being added to February every fourth year (our leap-year), so that the average length of the year would be 365-1∕4 days. The new system began with the year 45 B.C., and soon spread, under the name of the =Julian Calendar=, over the civilised world. 22. To avoid returning to the subject, it may be convenient to deal here with the only later reform of any importance. The difference between the average length of the year as fixed by Julius Caesar and the true year is so small as only to amount to about one day in 128 years. By the latter half of the 16th century the date of the vernal equinox was therefore about ten days earlier than it was at the time of the Council of Nice (A.D. 325), at which rules for the observance of Easter had been fixed. Pope Gregory XIII. introduced therefore, in 1582, a slight change;, ten days were omitted from that year, and it was arranged to omit for the future three leap-years in four centuries (viz. in 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, etc., the years 1600, 2000, 2400, etc., remaining leap-years). The =Gregorian Calendar=, or =New Style=, as it was commonly called, was not adopted in England till 1752, when 11 days had to be omitted; and has not yet been adopted in Russia and Greece, the dates there being now 12 days behind those of Western Europe.