COMMON THINGS TIME. 



the day from the night; and let them be for signs, anc 

 seasons, and for days, and years : 



"And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule 

 the day, and the lesser light to rule the night." Gen. i. 14, 16. 



Days, weeks, months, and years, and the subdivisions of a 

 day, hours, minutes, and seconds, having then been adopted by 

 mankind in general as the measures of time, and as the land- 

 marks of history and chronology, it may perhaps be thought that 

 little more remains to be said about the matter; that these 

 chronometric terms used in the common intercourse of life by all 

 peoples 



" Familiar in their mouths as household words," 



have significations so clear, distinct, and unequivocal as to super- 

 sede the necessity of all exposition and discussion. All the 

 world knows what a day is, and that weeks, months, and years 

 are composed of so many of these days. We shall, nevertheless, 

 soon render it apparent that the import of these very familiar 

 terms is not quite so clear even in the minds of moderately well- 

 informed persons as it is supposed to be. 



II. THE HOURS. 



9. The term DAY has two distinct significations* As opposed 

 to night, it means the interval during which we receive light from 

 the sun. Now this interval is not very definite. According to 

 some, it means the interval between sunrise and sunset. But 

 according to others, it signifies the interval between the morning 

 dawn and the termination of the evening twilight ; or from the 

 disappearance of the stars before sunrise to their reappearance after 

 sunset. 



The other sense of the word DAT is that in which it is used as 

 a chronometric term. It is the interval of time which elapses 

 between two successive appearances of the sun at the same point 

 of the heavens with relation to the horizon. This interval evi- 

 dently includes a day and a night. 



The Greeks used a word, for which there is no English equi- 

 valent, to express this latter sense of the term DAY. This word 

 was wxefaepov (nukthemeron,} a compound of the terms night 

 and day. 



10. From time immemorial a duodecimal division of the day 

 has been adopted by all nations. Some peoples have counted the 

 hours consecutively, from one to twenty-four. Others have divided 

 the day into two series of twelve hours. It may perhaps be a 

 legitimate subject of regret that the same system of decimal reckon- 

 ing, which has conferred, such simplicity upon the arithmetical 



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