nal INTRODUCTION. 
adoption of Mr. Fleming’s views by the International Scientific 
Conference at Washington in 1884. 
In a paper read during the last winter before the Canadian Insti- 
tute and included in this fascicu/us, Mr. Fleming has given an inter- 
esting history of the whole movement, he has pointed out the share 
which many learned societies in Europe and America have taken in 
the work. He has honourably mentioned the names of many 
scientific men who have assisted in the discussion, nor has he 
forgotten to notice in what way the Institute has helped forward the 
movement. To his own continued earnest and honourable labours 
in the cause Mr. Fleming has made no reference. This omission 
the Institute is constrained to notice in justice to Mr. Fleming and 
in justice to themselves. They may say what he has left unsaid, 
that his efforts have contributed in no small degree to the adoption 
of an initial Meridian common to all nations, and that he has un- 
questionably been the initiator and principal agent in the movement 
for reform in Time-Reckoning and in the establishment of the Uni- 
versal day. The Institute cannot, perhaps, better express the debt of 
gratitude which the civilized world owes to Mr. Sandford Fleming in 
this connexion than by quoting from the accompanying paper from 
the pen of the distinguished Astronomer Royal of Russia, M. Otto 
Struve: “It is,” he writes, ‘‘through Mr. Fleming’s indefatigable 
personal labours and writings that influential individuals and Scien- 
tific Societies and Institutes in America and Europe have been won 
over to the cause.” 
It is gratifying to the Institute to be able to put forward so honour- 
able and independent a testimony to the value of Mr. Fleming’s 
labours in this scientific revolution, and it is also to them a source of 
satisfaction to reflect that Mr. Fleming’s views were first communicated 
to the Institute, of which he is one of the earliest and most honoured 
members, and further, that through their printed transactions, those 
views were brought prominently under the notic2 of the scientifre 
world. 
