In Italy the year appears generally to have begun on January 1st, but in Florence on Lady day, March 25th. At Venice the legal year is known to have begun on March 1st, and most writers on Aldus have asserted positively that this was the date to which he conformed. That other Venetian printers observed January 1st as the first day of the year can be proved from the mention of Pietro Mocenigo as doge in the colophon to an edition of the “Istoria Fiorentina” of Leonardo Aretino. This ends: Impresso a Vinegia perlo diligente huomo Maestro Iacomo de Rossi di natione Gallo: Nellanno del Mcccclxxvj. a di xii de Febraio: Regnante lo inclyto Principe Messer Piero Mozenico. As our table of Venetian doges shows, Mocenigo died on February 23, 1476, eleven days after this colophon was printed; and it is thus clear that February, 1476, meant the same to “Maestro Iacomo de Rossi” as it does to us. That the antiquarian Aldus troubled his head about the beginning of the Venetian legal year seems a strange inconsistency. But the late Mr. R. C. Christie, who proved conclusively, in an article in “Bibliographica,” that in his later books Aldus began his year on January 1st, was yet obliged to admit that the Lascaris, which is dated “M.cccc.lxxxxiiii ultimo Februarii,” was probably finished only a few days before the Supplement, which bears date March 8, 1495, and that the Theodore Gaza of January, and the Theocritus of February, 1495, both really belong to 1496. I would suggest that in adopting March 1st as his New Year’s day in these three volumes, Aldus pleased himself with the idea that he was reckoning not “more Veneto” but “more antiquo Romano,” since (as the names of our last four months still testify) the Roman year originally began in March, and it was only the fact that after B.C. 153 the consuls entered office in January that caused our present reckoning to come into use, the sacerdotal year continuing to begin on March 1st. If Aldus, after adopting the Venetian legal year because it agreed with the earliest Roman reckoning, was convinced that he was being a little more Roman than the Romans themselves, it is easy to understand his change of practice. It would appear, then, that the only books for which we must reckon the year as beginning later than January 1st are a few early books of Aldus (March 1st), all English books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and books printed at Florence (March 25th) and in France (Easter). I strongly suspect, moreover, that in Florentine and French editions of learned works written in Latin there would be a tendency toward January 1st, but I cannot offer any proof of this at present, though it is a question which I hope some day to work out.