DAY AND NIGHT THE SEASONS 81 



In consequence, we find that in Ireland Greenwich time is not 

 used, but Dublin time, which is twenty-five minutes slow by 

 Greenwich time. In discussing these points railway time-tables 

 should be freely used, and the human side of the question insisted 

 upon. 



The author was much struck recently by a little experience 

 at the Little St. Bernard Hospice, where an Italian tramp asked 

 the time. When he was given the information he appeared 

 to recollect suddenly that his informant was travelling in the 

 opposite direction to himself, and put the further question Is 

 it French time or Central European ? The interesting point was 

 simply that practical experience had given the tramp a perfectly 

 clear and definite idea of the difference between the two times, 

 in spite of the fact that he was apparently without education. 

 When one recollects that many educated people, unless they have 

 travelled much, show a more or less hopeless confusion in the 

 matter of local time and change of time, it seems obvious that the 

 correct method is to take the practical side of the subject as a 

 starting-point. One should try, even before the children learn 

 anything about latitude and longitude, to show them, by 

 imaginary journeys, how conventional is our measurement of 

 time. 



Shadow experiments then, helped out by the various devices 

 we have suggested, show us that if we mark the position of the 

 sun at noon, we find that it takes about twenty-four hours before 

 he comes back again to the same position. In the words of the 

 geography book, the earth rotates in twenty-four hours. As we 

 have seen, the rotation is accomplished in exactly twenty-four hours 

 only at certain periods of the year. At other times the period 

 is either a little more or a little less. This rotation forms the 

 basis of our time, but our days are all of the same length, and 

 therefore are according to the season a little longer or a little 

 shorter than the actual time of rotation. 



But while at whatever point of the earth we are placed we 

 find that the earth rotates in twenty-four hours, the day does 

 not begin at the same moment everywhere. The people to the 

 east see the sun earlier and lose him earlier than the people to 

 the west, so that even for people twenty miles apart there is some, 



VOL. VI. 6 



