^1 INTRODaCTION. 



adoption of Mr. Fleming's views by the International Scientific 

 Conference at Washington in 1884. 



In a paper read during the last winter before the Canadian Insti- 

 tute and included in tiiis fasciculus, Mr. Fleming has given an inter- 

 esting history of the whole movement, he has pointed out the share 

 which many learned societies in Europe and America have taken in 

 the work. He has honourably mentioned the names of many 

 scientific njen who have assisted in the discussion, nor has he 

 forgotten to notice in what way the Institute has helped forward the 

 movement. To his own continued earnest and honourable labours 

 in the cause Mr. Fleming has made no reference. This omission 

 the Institute is constrained to notice in justice to Mr. Fleming atid 

 in justice to themselves. They may say what he has left unsaid, 

 that his efforts have contributed in no small degree to the adoption 

 of an initial Meridian common to all nations, and that he has un- 

 questionably been the initiator and principal agent in the movement 

 for reform in Time-Reckoning and in the establishment of the Uni- 

 versal day. The Institute cannot, perhaps, better express the debt of 

 gratitude which the civilized world owes to Mr. Sandford Fleming in 

 this connexion than by quoting from the accompanying paper from 

 the pen of the distinguished Astronomer Royal of Russia, M. Otto 

 Struve : "It is," he writes, "through Mr. Fleming's indefatigable 

 personal labours and writings that influential individuals and Scien- 

 tific Societies and Institutes in America and Europe have been won 

 over to the cause." 



It is gratifying to the Institute to be able to put forward so honour- 

 able and independent a testimony to the value of Mr. Fleming's 

 labours in this scientific revolution, and it is also to them a source of 

 satisfaction to reflect that Mr. Fleming's views were first communicated 

 to the Institute, of which he is one of the earliest and most honoured 

 members, and further, that through their printed transactions, those 

 views were brought prominently under the notice of the scientific 

 -world. 



