20 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
Kural Embellishments. 
SUN DIALS. 
[The following article was designed for two papers, 
but it should all go together, and we leave out some other 
good things to make room for it here. It has cost a good 
deal of investigation and labor, and is the first, and indeed 
the only complete article that has appeared on the sub¬ 
ject—at least, in this country. The introductory portions 
are rather historical, but the casual reader even, will be 
much interested in the latter part, if not in the whole.I 
Last month under the head of “Rural Embel¬ 
lishments,” we discoursed at some length, of ter¬ 
races and vases. We now propose to pursue the 
general subject, speaking particularly of sun-dials. 
The practice has long prevailed, and does still, 
to some extent, of setting statuary or sculptured 
figures of men and women, (generally symbolical,) 
en pedestals in different parts of the pleasure- 
ground. There is a pleasing significance in the 
usage, to which we are not insensible. They 
highten the expression of the place where they 
stand, and give it an air of classical elegance and 
finish. But it admits of a question whether the 
naked or nearly nude figures, copied often from 
statues of Southern Europe, are exactly appro¬ 
priate to our climate and our state of society. 
“ All heathen goddesses most rare, 
llomer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar, 
All standing naked in the open air,” 
doubtless looked well enough on the balmy shores 
of Lhe Mediterranean ; but in our hyperborean re¬ 
gions they suggest the idea of discomfort, and 
make one feel sympathy for the poor things, who 
ought to have more clothes on, especially in cold, 
stormy nights ! The exhibition of such fig-leaved 
"haracters may have answered well enough in 
the social state of classical times, and of South¬ 
ern Europe since ; but in our country, and in our 
present condition of society, we doubt whether 
the moral influence would be beneficial. At least, 
the taste is questionable. Instead of Hebes and 
Venuses “ wooing us from the tops of marble col¬ 
umns,” why not introduce some fanciful rural 
objects, or some artistic embodiment of the pleas¬ 
ant ideas which the country and the garden al¬ 
ways suggest 1 
And among these, we would mention the Sun- 
Dial, as being both useful and ornamental. Says 
Downing : “ Sun-Dials are among the oldest dec¬ 
orations for the garden and grounds, and there 
are scarcely any which we think more suitable. 
They are not merely decorative, but have also a 
useful character. When we meet daily in our 
walks for a number of years, with one of these 
silent monitors of the flight of time, we become 
in a degree attached to it, and really look on it 
as gifted with a species of intelligence, beaming 
out when the sunbeams smile on its dial-plate.” 
The Egyptians or Babylonians (we can not de¬ 
termine which,) first devised this instrument. The 
Hebrews also used it at an early day. In the 20th 
chapter of Second Kings, mention is made of the 
dial of Ahaz, 713 years before the Christian era. 
It will be remembered that in those ages they had 
no magnetic needle to mark the north or south, and 
no clocks or other time pieces to mark the hours. 
The Egyptians were the first to determine accu¬ 
rately the position of the meridian (noon line), 
and to divide the day into twenty-four equal parts. 
They placed their pyramids in the direction of the 
cardinal points. It was not long after this, that 
the Greeks began to cultivate the sciences of ge¬ 
ometry and astronomy ; then they outstripped all 
other nations in minute and accurate divisions of 
time. About 600 years before Christ, Anaxi¬ 
mander erected a gnomon or pyramid, which 
showed the time of noon, either by its shortest 
shadow, or by the shadow falling on a meridian 
line. He was instructed in the art by Thales, 
who studied in Egypt. One ancient historian 
records that the Greeks learned the art of dialing 
also from the Babylonians. 
The Romans were very slow to adopt any sci¬ 
entific method for dividing time As late as the 
fifth century after the building of their city (300 
years before Christ), the only periods of the day 
noted were the sunrise, sunset, and noon, which 
last was proclaimed aloud by a herald from a cer¬ 
tain high point of the city. One account states 
that the first dial known in Rome, was placed 
near the temple of Quirinus, about the year of the 
city 460 (292 years before Christ). Another 
writer doubts this, and puts the date 30 years la¬ 
ter, during the first Punic war, and says that the 
dial was brought home as 
a trophy of battle, from 
Catania, Sicily. It was 
not a perfect time-keep¬ 
er, because there were 
four degrees difference in 
latitude between Rome 
and Catania for which it 
was constructed. But 
they managed to use it 
ninety-nine years, when 
the consul Martius Phil- 
lipus caused another and 
more accurate one to 
be made. Doubtless 
some sharp-witted Greek 
constructed it, for Ro¬ 
man conquests had now 
begun to bring many of 
those acute and learned 
people to the imperial city. But how should they 
contrive to determine the hour by night, and in 
cloudy weather 1 It took a century of study and 
experiment to answer this. And here, again, 
Greek wit availed to invent the Clepsydra, which 
was an instrument for measuring time by the 
dropping of water, and not unlike the modern 
hour-glass. They were used in public and private 
houses, slaves being stationed near, to watch and 
announce the time as indicated by them. 
Ancient literature contains frequent allusions 
to Sun-Dials. The Grecian poet Menander in¬ 
troduces into one of his pieces a hungry parasite 
sitting by a dial and watching the arrival of the 
hour of his usual meal, “ but in his eagerness, he 
had begun so early as to mistake the light of the 
moon for that of the sun.” Some writer relates 
that a Sun-Dial having been shown to Epicurus 
(the father of high-livers) he exclaimed : “ What a 
fine invention to prevent one forgetting the hour 
of dinner!” A jolly Greek once engraved an in¬ 
scription on his dial-plate, to this effect: “ Six 
Fig. 2. 
■HR 
Fig. 3. 
hours of the day are given for labor ; the remain¬ 
ing four say to mortals, Live." These four hours 
are marked on the dial with certain letters which 
taken together from the word “ Live.” 
In a fragment of a comedy of Plautus, an epi¬ 
cure is represented as exclaiming against sun¬ 
dials in these terms : “May the gods confound 
the fellow who first invented hours, and placed 
the dial here, which doles out the day piecemeal 
to me, an unhappy wretch ! For when I was a 
boy, my belly was my dial, and it was by far the 
best, and truest of them all: I ate whenever it 
warned me,—that is, 
if anything could be 
had—but now, what¬ 
ever there may be, it 
is nothing, unless, for¬ 
sooth, it pleaseth the 
sun. Indeed, since 
the town is filled with 
dials, the greater part 
of the people crawl 
about starving with 
hunger!...—The 
best accounts we 
have seen of ancient 
sun-dials, assert that 
Berosus, the Chal¬ 
dean, invented the 
dial called the Huni- 
cycle; Aristarchus of 
Samos, the Scaphe ; Dionysidorus the Cone- 
Dial; Scopas the Plinthium; and others contrived 
other sorts with such crooked names that we can 
not undertake to write them. The Greeks had 
also portable dials which they used in traveling. 
The dial of Aristarchus w r as probably the sim¬ 
plest of all. “ It was a hemisphere cut in a cubic 
block of stone, having its base horizontal. At tho 
bottom of the cavity, a style (rod, or pointer) was 
erected, the top of which was at the center of the 
sphere. It is easy to see that the summit of the 
style would during every day describe an arc of a 
circle. Several antique instruments (dials) of 
this kind have been found: the first in 1741, in 
the ruins of an ancient Roman house at Tuscu- 
lum, which appears to 
have belonged to Cic¬ 
ero. It was placed in 
the museum of the 
Roman College in 
1746, and is consider¬ 
ed very valuable on 
account of its antiqui¬ 
ty and its having be¬ 
longed to the great 
Roman orator.” Sev¬ 
eral other dials of sim¬ 
ilar pattern have been 
found in the neighbor¬ 
hood of Rome and 
among the ruins of 
Pompeii. Ancient 
monuments also re¬ 
veal to us the forms of 
numerous dials. One at Ravenna (Italy) has the’ 
figure of a hemisphere supported on the shoulders 
of a Hercules ; another stands on a simple col¬ 
umn. Another curious dial, (see fig. 1,) a porta¬ 
ble one, was dug out of the ruins of Portici, in 
1755. Its shape is that of a bacon-ham, and it is 
suspended by a ring fastened to (he leg. The 
end of the tail answers for the style, or gnomon, 
and the hours are marked on that part of the ham 
which is nearest a plane surface. 
It appears that the Arabians understood, quite 
early, the science and art of dialing. One Jacob 
