SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS. 53 



Tiie dissertation of Mr. Sandford Fleming is of a more extended 

 [aUgempAneren) character, and his propositions founded upon it, were 

 sustained by the approval of the Canadian Institute, at Toronto, and 

 it is this body, by the intervention of the British Government, which 

 has more widely circulated Fleming's paper. Fleming directly advo- 

 cates the acceptance of the meridian 180° from Greenwich as the first 

 meredian for the whole earth, and the universal establishment of 

 time reckoned upon this meridian for scientific purposes, and even 

 for many of the relations of every day life. This time we may dis- 

 tinguish as " Cosmopolitan Time," in distinction to local time. 



Fleming submits in his treatise difierent arguments in favour of the 

 universal introduction of this ('Osmopolitan Time, indeed mostly in the 

 form of more generally expi^essed ideas which direct attention to this 

 weighty question, and which can serve as the starting point for a 

 more extended discussion. Above all things, he is desirous of obtain- 

 ing from competent professional men of all countries, definite answers 

 to the following two questions : 



1. Does the Time-zero or Prime Meridian, pro[)Osed in the memoir, 

 appear suitable and of a nature to be adopted by all civilized nations i 



2. If the Prime Meridian proposed give rise to serious oV)jections 

 would there be any other meridian better qualified, and which would 

 have more chance of being adopted by all the world ? 



Special circumstances enable Herr Otto Struve to answer the first 

 of these questions, since as early as the 4th February, 1870, before 

 the Geographical Society of St. Petersburg, he discussed the questions 

 ill connection with the first meridian, and exclusively from the geo- 

 graphical point of view, with which he specially connected the 

 interests of Cartography (map makiiig and navigation). The simplest 

 solution seemed to him to be to take as a first meridian, that of 

 Greenwich. 



Struve sustained this expressed pi-eference on one side by the his- 

 torical claim of the Observatory of Greenwich which it has established 

 from two centuries of super-eminent service to the cause of mathe- 

 matical geography and the interests of shipping, and on the other 

 hand from the consideration that the greater part of the present ma})s 

 in use, especially sea-charts, are projected relatively to this meridian 

 of Greenwich, and that about ninety per cent, of seamen refer their 

 longitudes to this mei"idian. 



But, indeed, according to Otto Struve, there is the circumstance 

 which declares itself against the common establishment of the meridian 

 of Greenwich, as the fi.i'st meridian, that it passes over three countries 

 'of Europe, Great Britain, France and Spain, likewise the continent 

 of Africa, and that accordingly in different parts of 'Europe and 

 Africa the longitudes would have different descriptions east cr west 



