384 TIME-KEEPING IN GREECE AND ROME. 



The allusions of ancient writers and of some modern ones to devices of 

 these two classes are sometimes mis-leading and confusing because this 

 distinction has not been kept in view. It is particularly important in 

 the study of the clepsydra, which is originally a time-check only, while 

 the sun-dial is a true time-keeper. 



The clepsydra or water clock, in its simj^lest form, is traced by his- 

 torians no further than Greece, about 430 B. c, in the time of Aristo- 

 phanes, whose familiar references to it show its use for certain purposes 

 to have been common. 



I confess I have been far from satisfied with stopping at this half-way 

 house in seeking for the origin of this instrument. I have sought fur- 

 ther, and what I have found, if conclusive of nothing, is at least sug- 

 gestive. 



If, taking our lives in our hands, we could. step on board a Malay proa, 

 we should see floating in a bucket of water a cocoanut shell having a 

 small perforation, through which the water by slow degrees finds its 

 way into the interior. This orifice is so proportioned that the shell will 

 fill and sink in an hour, when the man on watch calls the time and sets 

 it afloat again. This device of a barbarous, unprogressive people, so 

 thoroughly rude in itself, I conceive to be the rudest that search of any 

 length can bring to light. It is in all aspects rudimentary. One can 

 scarcely conceive of anything back of it but the play of children, and 

 as a starting point for this history, it is much more satisfactory than 

 what is disclosed in the polished ages of Greece. There is nothing in 

 its structure, if we were to consider chat only, to prevent it from being 

 a survival of an age long antecedent to the use of metal. The pro- 

 tolithic age might have originated it if can conceive that protolithic man 

 could have had use for it. 



Leaving our piratical friends, to whom we are so much indebted, and 

 passing to their not remote neighbors in Northern India, we find the 

 rude cocoanut shell developed into a copper bowl. Its operation is the 

 same; but the attendant who stands by and watches the moment of its 

 sinking, now strikes the hour on the resonant metal. It is easy to see — 

 in fact it would be difficult to doubt — that this has been an improve- 

 ment on an apparatus like that of the Malay and the natural result of 

 improvements in other arts, eminently that of metal-working. It is 

 more enduring, more perfectly accomplishes its purpose, and is in the 

 precise direction that improvement on the ruder appliance might be ex- 

 pected to pursue. 



Passing from Southern Asia to a people geographically remote, I next 

 observe the water clock in use up to this day in China. We find the 

 metal vessel with its minute perforation as before, but it has undergone 

 a radical change in respect to its manner of use. It is now filled and 

 the water flows from it in drops. Obviously enough the flight of time 

 might be indicated by merely observing when the vessel has emptied 

 itself, and then refilling it, which, as will presently appear, was exactly 



