King. — On Neto Zealand Mean Time. 435 



New Zealand at present) did desire to make such a change in 

 their habits as our hygienic reformers aim at. They believed 

 that they would be at a disadvantage in business matters as 

 compared with Victoria and New South Wales unless they 

 began business earlier, and they also considered that it would 

 be to their benefit if they had more daylight time for recrea- 

 tion after business hours. Very properly, therefore, they re- 

 solved to begin and end their day's work half an hour earlier. 

 But in doing so they must needs carry what one of their own 

 newspapers called their " slavery to habit " to such a pitch as 

 to falsify the clock to correspond with the change. They had 

 originally (in February, 1S95) adopted the time of the meridian 

 135° — viz., 9 h. fast on Greenwich — which correctly enough 

 represented the time of the bulk of their territory ; but when 

 they decided upon making the change in question they aban- 

 doned this in favour of the time 9f h. fast on Greenwich 

 (going beyond their eastern border for a meridian), and this 

 time since April, 1899, has been the standard for their State. 

 As a South Australian paper said, " If commercial advantages 

 are to be gained by manipulating the reckoning of time, the 

 question occurs whether our rivals may not seek to keep what 

 they have, and start the colonies on a war of clocks. That 

 would be, indeed, a reductio ad abszirditm." If one may 

 criticize a neighbouring State, I would express the opinion 

 that just as there is no need for New Zealand to give up the 

 half-hour reckoning, so there was no justification for South 

 Australia adopting such a reckoning. Circumstances alter 

 cases. The half-hour time is correct for us, but in South 

 Australia it meant a departure from correctness, and one for 

 which there was no call, as there might conceivably be if one 

 time for the whole of Australia were proposed. 



The believers in the desirableness of a change in the time of 

 New Zealand, therefore, are thrown back upon the original 

 argument — namely, that a 12 h. time would represent a 

 more complete fulfilment of the standard time idea ; and with 

 this argument I have, I hope, dealt fairly. Of course it is 

 conceivable that at some future time the conditions of the case 

 may be altered ; and if there should then be a general and 

 strong feeling amongst European and American reformers that 

 we should take up an integral-hour reckoning (say, the 12 h. 

 one), probably New Zealand would be enlightened enough to 

 comply, and to adapt her arrangements to the change. Such 

 adaptation would most probably take the shape of a corre- 

 sponding alteration of her nominal times of business and 

 pleasure, and where then would be the gain from the point of 

 view of the health reformers? 



What I have tried to prove is that the balance of advan- 

 tage at present is with our existing lHh. reckoning, and that 



