It has on the contrary seemed to me that on historical grounds a theory may be arrived at which will furnish a reasonable explanation of the present somewhat exceptional Chinese calendrical methods, and which will, if it is accepted, strongly reinforce the grounds for holding the already general opinion that the year in ancient times in China was solstitial. That opinion once established must lead us with increased confidence to attribute the honour traditionally paid by Hindus and Chinese alike to the initial point of their respective ecliptic series of star groups to, as I have said, their common acquaintance with a calendar established on high authority at the date in round numbers of 6,000 B.C. The year in China is luni-solar, and it is, as has been pointed out, counted from the season exactly midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It is counted from this mid-season and not from the sun’s opposition to, or conjunction with, any particular star or star group. It is therefore not a _sidereal_ but a _tropical_ year; and it is estimated at exactly the same length as is our European Gregorian year. We here in Europe are not yet tired of congratulating ourselves on the scientific success attained by Pope Gregory XIII., when in 1582 he, with the help of many learned men and astronomers, established, as a reform of the earlier Julian calendar, a method of securely binding all recurring anniversaries--civil and ecclesiastical--to the exact same _season_ of the year. Calculations for the arrangement of the Julian calendar had strained the scientific powers of the astronomers of Greece and Rome in Cæsar’s time, but the length of the year estimated by them was twelve minutes greater than that arrived at by the astronomers of Gregory’s later date. To find, as we do, in the far east of Asia a people counting the length of their luni-solar year with the same accurate exactness as that only attained to as late as 1582 A.D. in Europe, might well cause us surprise, were it not that history furnishes us with an easy explanation of this exact identity of Chinese and European calendrical calculations, by teaching us that the calendar by which the Chinese now count their years, and by which they have counted them for nearly three hundred years, was really compiled at Peking by Roman ecclesiastics, to whom the Gregorian methods were well known, and for whom, indeed, the study of these methods must have possessed the charm of novelty added to its intrinsic utility and scientific interest. Two learned Jesuit Fathers obtained in the 17th century great influence at the Chinese Court. In 1600 A.D., Matteo Ricci was allowed with his companions to settle at Peking, where he spent the remainder of his life in teaching mathematics and other sciences.