Page:Chronologies and calendars (IA chronologiescale00macdrich).pdf/92

 eastward, is twenty-three hours, ten minutes; going westward it is twenty-four hours, fifty minutes.' And the same authority points out how the 'time is changed daily; on the eastward trip the clocks are set forward four minutes for each degree of longitude, while in going to the westward, they are set backward four minutes for the same interval.' But now to return.

. The beginning of a new day to each of the Jews, Austrians, and Chinese is sunset; and sunrise among the modern Greeks and the Persians. The expression, working day, is used as meaning either the employee's day of labour, or in contra-distinction to days of rest. The term Halcyon days, sometimes met with in ancient histories, refers to the seven days of both sides of the shortest day.

. In Jerusalem there are at present three 'sabbaths' each week—Moslem, Jewish, and Christian. This is a startling fact.

. Some calendars, suck as the famous Almanach de Gotha, bring down annually to date, the best known of the ancient and purely historical chronologies, giving its readers the eras of the Olympiads and Nabonassur, also to the year of Rome, the Jewish ancient era, and the Julian period. It may be urged in favour of the continuations that they arrest attention in these days of high pressure. Anything which tends to make people think should be encouraged. When a person, on opening the almanac, finds the current year of grace and historic cycles side by side, his mind is