[ixMSDEN] UNIFICATION OF TIME 85 



reported on that ami cognate questions. The committee made its re])ort 

 oil the 3rd of Au<;ust, and, eventually on the 22nd of September, the 

 Foreign Office issued to Her Majesty's representatives in the countries 

 which publish Astronomical Ephemerides, viz., Fi-ance, (iermany, the 

 United States, Austria, Sj»ain, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico, a circular, in 

 which it was stated that while the Lords of the Admiralty "do not con- 

 sider the change necessary, they are nevertheless prepared to carry it out 

 in lUOl, provided that other nations who publish astronomical ephemerides 

 desire the change and will take the same action." The representatives 

 were instructed to bring the matter of the proposed unitication of time 

 to the notice of the governments to which they were accredited and to 

 ascertain and report '-their views with regard to the proposal." 



So far as the Astronomical and Ph^'sical Society is aware, official 

 replies have been received by the British Foreign Office from the gov- 

 ernments of the United States, Austro-Hungary, Spain, Brazil and 

 Mexico. The United States, so the British minister at Washington was 

 informed in October, " are averse to the Canadian proposition." The 

 government ajipears to have adopted the unfavourable report of the 

 superintendent of the Naval Observatory, the director of the Nautical 

 Almanac and the astronomical director of the Naval Observatoiy. For 

 Austro-llungaiy, the minister of Foreign AflPairs replied that the proposal 

 had been referred to a committee appointed by the Imperial Academy of 

 Sciences at Vienna, as experts, in whose opinion, from an astronomical 

 point of view, the I'eform " does not seem specially expedient and would 

 hardly afford any practical results." The minister, however, "thinks it 

 right to add that, according to the views expressed by the departments 

 concerned, the Austro-Hungarian mercantile marine would raise no objec- 

 tion to the suggested innovation, any more than would the Imperial and 

 Royal Navy, as may be gathered from the accompanying cop}' of a note 

 from the head of the Naval Section of the Imperial War Departments." 

 In his note, the Naval Head says : "The said establishments will, there- 

 fore, conform to the mode of reckoning accepted by the majority of 

 of nations whose principles they adopt as authoritative. It was of greater 

 importance for the Naval Department to know the views of the Lords of 

 the British Admiralty a? to the plan of the Nautical Almanac from the 

 year 1901, onwards, which are expressed in the Foreign Office circular, 

 annexed to the note in question. With regard to this, I beg to state that 

 the Imperial and Royal Hydrographical Office of Pola has, at my request, 

 been in communication with the Meteorological Observatory at Trieste, 

 a8 to which system of day reckoning would be employed in the Austrian 

 Ephemerides for the year 1901, drawn up at that observatory, published 

 by order of the Imperial and Royal Naval Authorities, and subsidized by 

 the Marine Section of the Imperial and Royal War Department, and the 

 answer is to the effect that the arrangement of the Nautical Almanac 



