NEW TIME-RECKONING. 353 



Fig. 4. When the earth has made half a revohition and twelve liours 

 have ehi[>sed, the solar passage is at this stage on twelve-hour or Prime 

 Meridian. 



Similarly for every other meridian, and thus the precise relation be- 

 tween Cosmic Time and longitude is definitely established. 



It may be said that Cosmic or Universal Time is accepted in science, 

 but its adoption in ordinary life can only be gradually and perhaps with 

 difficulty effected. It is not to be looked for that a change so marked, 

 involving a revolution of thought in some of our social customs, can be 

 speedily introduced, however desirable it may be in the public interest. 

 There is a class of men who habitually express their contempt for what 

 they designate as " new-fangled notions," and who refuse to go out of 

 sight of old landmarks. The usages which we desire to supersede are 

 certainly old, for they took their origin when our civilization was young. 

 In those days it was a dogma that the earth had a flat surface, but as 

 the belief that the earth is a plane is no longer invested with the au- 

 thority of a truth, we may venture to call in question the theory that 

 each locality on its surface possesses an independent stream of time and 

 is called upon to defend and maintain it. The human race is no longer 

 confined within a narrow area. It has overspread the surface of the 

 earth ; in the Old and Few Worlds it has grown, in some portions of their 

 extent it is still growing, from an infantile condition to a state of man- 

 hood. Are we not yet able to look beyond one individual horizon and 

 enlarge our range of vision so as to include a system which will satisfy 

 the requirements, not of a locality, but of the whole globe? 



We are living in an age of intellectual and social progress, when 

 men are less fettered than our fathers were by the restraints of custom. 

 On the continent of North America extraordinary progress has already 

 been made by an essentially practical people towards the adoption of 

 a complete reform in ti»me-reckoning. What is known as the Stand- 

 ard-hour system, in itself in complete harmony with the principles of 

 Cosmic Time, has been in common use for nearly three years, and it is 

 generally recognized as an incalculable benefit to the whole community. 

 Throughout the United States and Canada we have outgrown the no- 

 tion of isolating each locality by compelling it to observe a separate time 

 notation. The Continent is divided into zones, each zone having the 

 same time throughout its extent, based on a meridian which is a multi- 

 ple of fifteen degrees from the Prime Meridian. Consequently the time 

 of each zone varies exactly one hour from that of the adjoining zones. 

 Thus all the variations of time which formerly were limited only by the 

 number of towns and cities and localities which observed their own lo- 

 cal time are reduced to the five zones. Only at points where the zones 

 come in contact is there any exception to the common satisfaction which 

 has resulted from the change. These are the only localities where we 

 find the old-time difficulties, now so happily removed from every other 

 section of the Continent. At such localities the difSculties must con- 

 H. Mis. 170 23 



