108 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Feb. G, 1885, 



view, says of Ethiopian tribes, "there are some who, by 

 way of speech, use nods and movements of the limbs.* 



Of late years we have heard little worthy of credit from 

 travellers about dumb races, aud the statements which have 

 been handed down to us from the ancients probably partly 

 arose from misuuderstauding, partly from the ancient love 

 of exaggeration. Yet as we study the descending scale of 

 civilisation, we fiud that the lower we go the more are 

 gestures aud inarticulate sounds used to eke out the mean- 

 ings of word-*. 



Thus Madame Pfeift'er states that the Puris for " to-day " 

 say " day," and touch themselves on the head or point 

 upwards ; for " to-morrow " they say "day," and point for- 

 ward ; and for " yesterday " they use the same word and 

 point behind them.t 



Dr. Milligan says the Tasmanians eke out monosyllabic 

 words with gesticulations and signs, and that " they 

 observed no settled order or arrangement of words in the 

 construction of their sentences, but conveyed in a supple- 

 mentary fashion by tone, manner, and gesture, those 

 modifications of meaning which we express by mood, tense, 

 number, &c.";]: 



Captain Burton, speaking of a tribe of North Americans, 

 remarks that, " Those natives who, like the Arapahos, 

 possess a very scanty vocabulary, pronounced in a quasi- 

 unintelligible way, can hardly converse with one another 

 in the dark ; to make a stranger understand them they 

 must alwajs repair to the camp fire for ' pow-wow.'" § 



For reasons about to be explained, these statements 

 from travellers must be received with certain qualifications; 

 but there can be no doubt that gestures and facial expres- 

 sion have an importance as forming a part of language 

 which is not sufficiently appreciated, and this must be my 

 justification for devoting the next two or three articles to 

 a systematic review of the subject. 



THE EEFORMATION IN TIME- 

 KEEPING. |1 



By W. F. Allen. 



(Continued from p. 70.) 



A COMPLETE system of standard time was finally 

 devised and submitted in April, 1883, to several 

 railway conventions, assembled to consider other subjects, 

 at which about fifty important companies were represented. 

 The system proposed was deemed practicable, and recom- 

 mended for adoption, by the railway officials present at 

 these conventions. It involved the total abolition of the 

 use of local time by the public, except at points situated on 

 the governing meridians. 



A theory of reform had been under consideration by 

 scientific societies for years, and several systems of standard 

 time had been proposed, founded upon this theoi-y, without 

 practical result. Many investigators of the problem among 

 railway officials and scientists had independently arrived 

 at the conclusion that this theory was the correct one. It 

 was based upon the idea of grouping sections of the 

 country together under the same standard with an even 

 hour difl'erence between the standards of the adjoining 

 groups. " Eastern standard time," which is the standard 



* VI., 35. 



t " Eine Fraiienf.-ilirt iini die Ei-do," p. 102. 



I Millif^an, in Proc. of Koyal Soc. of Tasmania, vol. iii., p. II. 



§ Burton, " City of tlie Saints," p. 151. 



II From the Popular Science Monthly. 



of the section in which Boston, New York City, Phila- 

 delphia, Washington, &c., are located, is simply the mean 

 time of the seventy-fifth meridian west fi'om Greenwich, 

 and the time kept in all these cities is now jirecisely alike. 

 The dotted lines on the right and left of the diagram repre- 

 sent the mean times formerly kept at New York City and 

 Washington in their relation to " Eastern standard time."^ 

 If a curved line were projected on one of these dotted 

 lines parallel with the curved line on the diagram, and at 

 the same distance, its relation to the central perpendicular 

 line would represent the relation which solar time at New 

 York or Washington bears to the standard time of the 

 seventy-fifth meridian. 



In the various discussions of the question a difficulty 

 arose in deciding upon the best govei-ning meridian. Should 

 it be Greenwich, Washington, or New York ? Each had 

 its advocates. If this question could be settled, a more 

 serious one arose in determining the proper lines upon 

 which the sections could be divided. The result of its 

 adoption has proved that the system proposed in April, 

 1883, solved the questions satisfactorily. This system is 

 now in force, and is represented in outline on the map 

 which appears on our next page. It will be noticed that the 

 dividing lines are irregular. Communities near the border 

 which have adopted the system, use the standard east or 

 west of their localities, according to the direction in which 

 their business interests lie. In other words, the question 

 is determined by convenience of use, as questions in regard 

 to time-keeping have always been determined. The pecu- 

 liaiities of ownership or operation of the railroads deter- 

 mined their points of change. Legislative enactment will 

 doubtless ultimately define the precise boundaries of the 

 sections of countries to be governed by each standard. 



The action of the railroad companies having been assured, 

 the sub.sequent action on the part of city governments 

 became possible, as it could not have been otherwise. Of 

 the labour and means employed to secure this action on the 

 part of the railways and the cities, it is unnecessary here 

 to speak. They proved sufficient to accomplish very fully 

 the end desired. More than eighty jier cent, of all the 

 cities of over ten thousand inhabitants in the United 

 States have adopted standard time. 



The adoption of the new standard required a simultaneous 

 change to be made in the railway-clocks and the watches 

 of emploijes upon nearly every railroad in the United 

 States and Canada, the change varying from one minute 

 and three seconds on the Pennsylvania Railroad to forty- 

 five minutes on the Intercolonial Railway of Canada. The 

 exceptions were two roads in the vicinity of New Orleans, 

 and a few lines in the vicinity of Denver. The change 

 was also slight for some of the St. Louis roads. The 

 Intercolonial Railway adopted the time of the seventy-fifth 

 meridian as a matter of convenience, instead of that of the 

 sixtieth meridian, to which its location would have properly 

 assigned it. So perfect were the preparations that not a 

 single accident at any point is recorded as having been 

 caused by the change. On the day when the new stan- 

 dards took effect, the clocks of about twenty thousand 

 railway-stations and the watches of three hundred thousand 

 railway emphijis were reset. Hundreds, perhaps thou- 

 sands, of city and town clocks were altered to conform. 

 How many individuals reset theii- watches it is impossible 

 to compute, but they could certainly be reckoned by mil- 

 lions. Probably no such singular incident has ever before 

 happened, or is likely to occur again. 



At the present time, from the Atlantic Ocean at the 

 eastern extremity of New Brunswick, to the Pacific coast 

 at Oregon, the minute-hands of the railway clocks and 

 watches indicate the same minute of time at all hours, and 



