PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 137 



copies of the restored standard replacing the one destroyed by 

 the burning of the Parliament building in 1834. The bronze 

 standard is now found to be shorter than the iron one by about 

 the quarter of the thousandth part of one inch. On subsequently 

 comparing the duplicate bronze standard deposited with the 

 Canadian Government, the same change was detected. This was 

 referred to the bronze composition being in a state of tension 

 owing to the varying molecular deportment of the copper, the 

 zinc, and the tin, of which the alloy was composed, and the annual 

 oscillations of temperature from summer to winter (amountinff 

 probably to nearly 100 degrees) to which the standards had been 

 exposed so many times, in the small fire-proof building where 

 they had been deposited for safe keeping. It was supposed that 

 the iron standard, from being internally more homogeneous, was 

 probably the more accurate measure of the two. Reference was 

 made to various other alloys which had been proposed or em- 

 ployed ; as in the new International standard metre of platinum 

 and iridium; but the suggestion was offered that all were open to 

 suspicion. Reference was also made to the employment of a 

 natural crystal of quartz, 42 inches long, on which it was pro- 

 posed to mark a standard metre. 



Remarks on the communication were made by Messrs. Anti- 

 sell, Elliott, and Taylor. 



A communication was made by Mr. E. B. Elliott on 



standards op TliME — INTERNATIONAL, SECTIONAL, AND LOCAL. 



The importance was urged in the first place of fixing more defi- 

 nitely in the Pacific Ocean, the dividing meridian separating the 

 adjacent days of the month or week as computed from the eastern 

 or the western arrival. Behring's Strait, the treaty boundary 

 line between Alaska and Eastern Siberia, a meridian about 168^ 

 degrees west from Greenwich, was referred to as a good natural 

 terminus. The meridian of 180 degrees— some eleven degrees 

 further west — was also referred to as one commonly used by 

 navigators. 



In this connection some remarks were made on the importance 

 for railway and telegraphic purposes, of an International standard 

 combined with sectional standards of time to replace the gradu- 



