es of
scientific investigation, so marked a feature of modern inquiry.

Taking the globe as a whole, it is not now possible precisely to
define when a year or a month or a week begins. There is no such
interval of time as the commonly defined day everywhere and
invariable. By our accepted definition, a day is local; it is limited
to a single meridian. At some point on the earth's surface one day is
always at its commencement and another always ending. Thus, while the
earth makes one diurnal revolution, we have continually many days in
different stages of progress on our planet.

Necessarily the hours and minutes partake of this normal irregularity.
Clocks, the most perfect in mechanism, disagree if they differ in
longitude. Indeed, if clocks are set to true time, as it is now
designated, they must, at least in theory, vary not only in the same
State or county, but to some extent in the same city.

As we contemplate the general advance in knowledge, we cannot but feel
surprised that these ambiguities and anomalies should be found,
especially as they have been so long known and felt. In the early
conditions of the human race, when existence was free from the
complications which civilization has led to; in the days when tribes
followed pastoral pursuits and each community was isolated from
the other; when commerce was confined to few cities, and
intercommunication between distant countries rare and difficult; in
those days there was no requirement for a common system of uniform
time. No inconvenience was felt in each locality having its own
separate and distinct reckoning. But the conditions under which we
live are no longer the same. The application of science to the means
of locomotion and to the instantaneous transmission of thought and
speech have gradually contracted space and annihilated distance. The
whole world is drawn into immediate neighborhood and near
relationship, and we have now become sensible to inconveniences and to
many disturbing influences in our reckoning of time utterly unknown
and even unthought of a few generations back. It is also quite
manifest that, as civilization advances, such evils must greatly
increase rather than be lessened, and that the true remedy lies in
changing our traditional usages in respect to the notation of days and
hours, whatever shock it may give to old customs and the prejudices
engendered by them.

In countries of limited extent, the difficulty is easily grappled
wit