Unification in the measure of time. 87 



meridian might be universally adopted, the Bologna 

 Academy of Science would never have thought of making 

 the proposals, nor would I have accepted a mission, which, 

 owing to the unavoidable misrepresentations usual in 

 matters of that kind, makes me appear as advocating, " the 

 suppression of the Greenwich meridian ! " More than 

 enough, and I speak by experience, to make me regarded in 

 England as a kind of bite noire. 



As regards the choice of Jerusalem, "where every form 

 of religion, every nationality of East and West is represented 

 at one time,"* the Ottoman Government, which has been 

 already applied to, has shown the most favourable dispo- 

 sition.f Moreover, the Jerusalem antimeridian would cross 

 the land of Alaska, where the change of date was already 

 in use,| whilst should, as it was suggested, the meridian of 

 Behring Straits have the preference, the interests of science, 

 requiring a series of Observatories of various kinds and at 

 different latitudes along the initial meridian, would cause the 

 Behring one to be, practically, but a fiction, and the real 

 initial meridian to be its antimeridian. Now the Behring 

 antimeridian would constitute a German, Hamburg o'' 

 Halle, initial meridian — a circumstance deserving con- 

 sideration. Let it also be observed, by the way, that the 

 present Jewish Calendar, reformed in the ivth century by 

 Rabbi Hillel Hanassi, is based on the Jerusalem meridian.§ 



* CoNDER (Claude Reignier, lieutenant), R.E. Tent work in Palestine. 

 London, 1885, p. 162. 



t See in the Nouvelle Revue of November 15, the report of Coumbary 

 Effendi, Director of the Meteorological Observatory at Constantinople, 

 p. 440 : La Turquie, k Calendrier tuiiversel, et le nieridien initial. 



X See Bulletin of the Washington Philosophical Society, Jan. 30, 1875, 

 p. 38. 



§ See, on the present Jewish Calendar, Ideler (Ludwig) Handbuch der 

 mathefjiatischett und technischen Chronologie, 2nd edit., Breslau, 1883, and 

 Mahmoud, sur les Calendriers juddique et nnisulinan, in the Memoires des 

 savants etrangers, couronnes par tAcadeinie royale de Belgique. T. XXVI. 

 and XXVII. 



