140 LONGITUDE AND TIME-RECKONING. 
kova, near St. Petersburg. Washington was adopted by the United 
States, and the charts of that country are still constructed with 
Washington as a first meridian, although Greenwich is now used 
for reckoning longitude by all sea-going ships carrying the United 
States flag. The Italians selected Naples; and ships of the empire 
of Brazil reckon in part from Rio de Janeiro. 
An earnest desire has frequently been expressed for the determi- 
nation of one prime meridian common to all nations, but all attempts 
for its establishment have failed. On all sides there has been an 
adherence, with more or less tenacity, to the arbitrary zeros adopted 
or suggested by the national navigators. Recommendations have 
however from time to time been made in the general interests of 
science, which is unconfined by national boundaries and unprejudiced 
by national vanity. Some astronomers have proposed Alexandria, 
from its being the place to which Ptolemy’s observations and compu- 
tations were reduced. The Great Pyramid has also been proposed as 
the point through which the world’s prime merid ian should be drawn; 
it has found an earnest advocate in Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astro- 
nomer Royal for Scotland. 
Other astronomers have proposed that a meridian should be 
established from celestial phenomena, so that national sensitiveness 
shall in no way be hurt. Laplace recommended the adoption of a 
universal first meridian, upon which it was 12 o’clock when the sun 
entered the point of the vernal equinox in the year 1250, in which 
the apogee of the earth’s orbit coincided with the solsticial point in 
Cancer. According to Maury, such a universal meridian would pass 
about 8 miles west of Cape Mesurada, on the coast of Africa. 
This initial meridian was favoured by Herschel. It is certainly 
suggested by no local circumstances such as noon or midnight, or by 
the observatory or metropolis of any nation. Its determination is 
made solely by the motion of the sun among the stars, in which all 
the nations of the earth have a common interest. Herschel designated 
the time reckoned by this meridian “ Equinoctial time.” But this 
meridian possesses no one advantage not common to all other 
meridians, beyond being perfectly free from national relationships. 
The initial meridian for the world should be chosen for other 
reasons than any of those which, as far as I know, have yet been 
advanced. In another place I have shown that it would be the 
separating line on the surface of the earth, between two consecutive 
