House & Garden 
UPON SUN-DIALS AND HOW TO 
MAKE THEM. 
TTOR ages before clocks and watches were 
1 invented the sun-dial was the only time¬ 
piece known. Gnomonics, or the art of 
dialling, was the pastime of ancient mathe¬ 
maticians and astronomers. Herodotus as¬ 
cribed the invention of the sun-dial to the 
Chaldeans; but though the crude hemicycle 
of their astronomer Berosus served as a 
prototype for several centuries, it remained 
for the Arabians to elaborate it and to carry 
the art of dialling to intricacies unreached 
before or since. As tar as history extends 
backward, we find mention of the sun-dial; 
and if records had not faded we should 
doubtless know this form of timepiece to 
have been in common use yet earlier than 
the era of those ancient peoples we have 
mentioned. 
In latter-day garden-craft the sun-dial has 
occupied a hallowed place. With the open¬ 
ing of the sixteenth century and the rapid 
development of formal gardening from that 
time onward, its design and construction 
were much discussed, and the dicta comes 
down to us in a quaint and quasi-scientific 
literature. Marvell tells of a gardener who 
made a dial out of herbs and flowers and 
“ Where from above the milder sun 
Does through a fragrant zodiac run ; 
And as it works, the industrious bee 
Computes its time as well as we. 
How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers ? ” 
It was then that the shepherds would 
“carve out quaint dials, point by point,” and 
“a true Dyall or Clock, and some Anticke 
works, and especially silver sounding Mu- 
sique, mixt Instruments and voyces.” 
Phe dial was given a place of honor and 
the best exposure on the walls of buildings; 
it enjoyed the fairest setting at the crossing 
of garden alleys; its shape was wrought into 
innumerable and imaginative forms receiving 
the touches of skilled artists; and the 
aphorisms of poets was the sole language of 
that otherwise mute witness of passing days 
and fleeting human lives. Even in France, 
Italy and other Continental countries, classic 
pavilions, fountains and great sculptures 
failed to altogether crowd out the stone disc 
awaiting the march of the sun, while pre¬ 
eminently in England and Scotland the place 
of the sun-dial in garden design has always 
been supreme. In the latter country the 
delight in the mathematics of the dial gave 
rise to the complicated forms upon globes, 
crosses, cylinders and hollowed hemispheres. 
The opportunities afforded for variety and 
beauty of form and for gnomic phraseology 
have been largely responsible for the favor 
the dial has enjoyed with our ancestors and 
for the present efforts to recover all old ex¬ 
amples possible and to record their shapes 
and enrichment, their inscriptions and their 
story. 
Burning now to the construction of sun¬ 
dials we shall confine ourselves to their 
mechanical side only; and with the object of 
clearing away some of the puzzling difficulties 
of laying them out, we shall endeavor to give 
concisely practical directions unconfused with 
mathematical theory. There are numerous 
kinds of dials, many more than we are ac¬ 
customed to seeing illustrated in readily 
accessible books or here and there in old- 
fashioned gardens in 
this country. There 
are, for example, 
horizontal dials and 
vertical dials, inclin¬ 
ing and reclining, 
erect declining dials, 
reflective dials, globe, 
B p o 1 a r, equatorial, 
equinoctial, cross, 
and window dials. Then there are dials 
which record the seasons only and others 
which measure time by the moonlight. But 
the horizontal and the vertical types of sun¬ 
dial are the most common, the simplest and 
the most useful; and to the former of these 
we shall confine ourselves in the present paper. 
Concerning materials, it is sufficient to say 
that any substance may be used so long as 
it has the paramount qualification of being 
enduring. As the dial is to measure time, 
its own equipment should be coeval with it,— 
should surpass and outlast time, if such a 
thing were possible. Stone has been most 
frequently chosen for the dial-face, but 
smooth gravel with tiles for the hour figures 
would answer as well, were it not that in such 
a case the gnomon would have to be imprac¬ 
ticably large. Indeed, there is evidence that 
the obelisks of the Egyptians served as 
5U 
