436 Anniversary Meeting. [Dec. 1, 



his opinions. The arguments adduced in favour of the adoption of 

 Greenwich were such as must commend themselves to all unpreju- 

 diced minds. It could hardly be expected that there should be any 

 special spot upon the earth's surface from which longitude would 

 naturally be reckoned, and the whole question, apart from any 

 sentimental or patriotic feelings, is therefore one of the greatest con- 

 venience. Were the employment of degrees of longitude as general 

 geographical units entirely unheard of up to the present time, it 

 would, of course, be a matter of perfect indifference whether the 

 datum was at Greenwich, Paris, the Ferroe Isles, or any other 

 spot. The meridians most in use are those of the two former 

 places, and when we come to consider that, as was pointed out, 

 the shipping tonnage controlled by the Greenwich standard of 

 longitude is about 14 million tons, while that controlled by the 

 longitude of Paris amounts to If million tons only, the prepon- 

 derance of convenience in favour of the former is placed beyond all 

 dispute. The use of nautical charts constructed from the meridian of 

 Greenwich, and also of the Greenwich Nautical Almanack, is by no 

 means confined to the British Navy, for numerous other nations have 

 availed themselves of the long-extended labours of our hydrographers, 

 and the computations of our astronomers. At the same time there is 

 no one among us who would for a moment venture to dispute the vast 

 services to science which have been rendered by French astronomers 

 and geographers, nor should we contest the right of French savants 

 to regard Paris as the /i6tro'/i0n\o9 katla. of all other branches of science ; 

 the question of a common zero of longitude, however, is not only of 

 scientific but of commercial importance, and we may be confident that 

 eventually our friends on the other side of the Channel, whose metric 

 system has been so largely adopted by other countries, will in their 

 turn sacrifice their own meridian, and adopt that which all neigh- 

 bouring countries have declared to be the most convenient for general 

 use. If some French locality on the meridian of Greenwich, such for 

 instance as Argentan, were nominally the French datum, the results 

 would be the same so far as maps and charts are concerned, and 

 the natural patriotism of the French nation would remain uninjured. 



The adoption of an universal day has also been recommended by 

 the Conference. It is to be a mean solar day to begin for all the 

 world at the moment of mean midnight of the initial meridian, 

 coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that 

 meridian, and is to be counted from zero up to twenty-four hours. 



The great volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, in the Straits of Sunda, 

 which took place in August of last year, was followed by remarkable 

 atmospheric and other disturbances, observations on which have been 

 communicated to this and various other learned Societies, and have 

 led to much interesting discussion. The fact, as pointed out by 



