Trans IN: VY OACHoce. we se Jan. 16, 
pleased to interest himself actively in promoting the success of the 
movement. The papers relating to it which have been published by the 
two associations whose titles have just been mentioned!?, have been 
forwarded by Lord Lorne, through the British Foreign Office in Lon- 
don, to countries with which Great Britain is in diplomatic relations, 
and to their scientific associations ; and from the Imperial Academy of 
Sciences at St. Petersburg have been received copies of a report from 
a committee, of which tne eminent astronomer Otto Struve was chair- 
man, cordially approving the project; which report was adopted by the 
Academy. 
Two or three minor features of the scheme contained in the resolu- 
tions proposed remain to be mentioned. The first of these is the pro- 
position to abolish the present division of the day into two equal portions 
of twelve hours each, and to employ instead a continuous count running 
from one to twenty-four hours in each day. The division at present 
in useis nota natural one. It is founded, presumably, upon the custom 
of astronomers to begin the day at the meridian passage of the sun, or 
the habit of the people to fix the moment, of apparent noon by observ- 
ing the coincidence of the shadow of a vertical style with a line drawn 
north and south. The natural division of the day is into a light portion 
ard a dark portion. These portions are always and everywhere 
unequal, except for a single day in the year, or for a single great circle 
of the earth—the equator. Noexact system for the uniform division of 
time can therefore be founded upon them. On the other hand, no 
disadvantage can arise from regarding the day as a unit, subdivided 
into twenty-four equal fractions, a mode of division once very general, 
at least in Italy, and hardly yet entirely abandoned; while there are 
very appreciable disadvantages attending the present division into 
twelve-hour moieties. The first of these is the necessity of using 
always in speech the word forenoon or afternoon, in order to identify 
the portion of the day to which any hour which happens to be mention- 
ed or is to be referred; or, in writing, to place afier the number of the 
hour the explanatory suffix A. M.or P.M. Another and even greater 
is the uncertainty in railway time-tables as to whether a particular 
hour is an hour of the night or of the day. The compact form of these 
tables renders it impossible always to introduce the necessary specifi- 
cations in their columns, and the inquirer is thus often left at a loss. 
Some of the tables, in order to remove the embarrassment, have 
employed the expedient of printing the hours of the night in white 
letters upon a black ground, while those of the day are printed in the 
usual way with black letters upon a white ground"; but the very 
adoption of this expedient is a confession of the existence of an evil 
which we may easily perceive to be quite unnecessary. Let the hours 
