Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/816

796 half an hour shorter than the afternoons. In view of the importance attached by some astronomers to the use of exact local time in civil life, it would be interesting to know how many villagers have remarked this circumstance.

It is essential to bear these facts in mind when we have to consider the extent to which local time regulates the affairs of life, and the degree of sensitiveness of a community to a deviation of half an hour or more in the standard reckoning of time. My own experience is that in districts which are not within the influence of railways the clocks of neighboring villages commonly differ by half an hour or more. The degree of exactitude in the measurement of local time in such cases may be inferred from the circumstance that a minute-hand is usually considered unnecessary. I have also found that in rural districts on the Continent arbitrary alterations of half an hour fast or slow are accepted not only without protest but with absolute indifference.

Even in this country, where more importance is attached to accurate time, I have found it a common practice in outlying parts of Wales (where Greenwich time is about twenty minutes fast by local time) to keep the clock half an hour fast by railway—i. e., Greenwich—time, or about fifty minutes fast by local time. And the farmers appeared to find no difficulty in adapting their hours of labor and times of meals to a clock which at certain times of the year differed more than an hour from the sun.

There is a further irregularity about the sun's movements which makes him a very unsafe guide in any but tropical countries. He is given to indulging in a much larger amount of sleep in winter than is desirable for human beings who have to work for their living and can not hibernate as some of the lower animals do. To make up for this he rises at an inconveniently early hour in summer and does not retire to rest till very late at night. Thus it would seem that a clock of steady habits would be better suited to the genius of mankind.

Persons whose employment requires daylight must necessarily modify their hours of labor according to the season of the year, while those who can work by artificial light are practically independent of the vagaries of the sun. Those who work in collieries, factories, or mines, would doubtless be unconscious of a difference of half an hour or more between the clock and the sun, while agriculturists would practically be unaffected by it, as they can not have fixed hours of labor in any case.

Having thus considered the regulating influence of the sun on ordinary life within the limits of a small community, we must now take account of the effect of business intercourse between different communities separated by distances which may range from a few miles to half the circumference of our globe. So long as the means of communication were slow, the motion of the traveler was insignificant