Where Does the Day Begin.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 850, 15 June 1888, Page 9

Where Does the Day Begin.

Writers in the English Mechanic and Chambers’ Journal write in the following interesting and instructive style on the above question : - Oue would expect that the start-ing-point of time for the whole' human race would have been a spot as interesting to travellers, and as celebrated as the source of. the Nile or the Congo; and whenever the poets grasp the majesty of the ideas associated with this mysterious 4 womb of time,’ they will certainly not fail to sing of it. Most people imagine that if we were living at the spot where the day commences, we should observe nothing extraordinary, but that the days would glideevenly by, as they do in Europe and elsewhere ; but this is by no means the case. If the spot from which the new day sets forth should happen to be on land (aud aa a matter of fact it, ia so), we must be prepared to expect some interesting anomalies .there. I pointed out in Nature, May 9, 1878, that the daily startingpoint of time really occurs at Sitka, in Alaska, in what was the Russian portion of North America. After having long and in vain sought for this information, among travellers and geographers, I met with it in a small book entitled 4 The Geographical Reader,’ by C. B. Clarke, M.A., London, 1876. At p. 19 the author says : ‘ At the town of Sitka, in Alaska, half the population are Russians who have arrived from Russia across Asia ; half the population Americans who have arrived via the United States. Hence, when it is Sunday with the Russians, it is Saturday with the Americans. The Russians are busy on Monday while the Americans are in church on Sunday, , to the great interruption of business.’ Here, then, is evidently the answer to the question, Where does the day begin ? As this territory has now been ceded to the United States, the Russian chronology must gradually but inevitably die out, and the starting point will doubtless thereafter be where it ought to be—viz., on one of the Aleutian or Behrings ( Straits islands still-owning Russian sway, so that no inconvenience will be felt by anybody. We may record the boundary line between Alaskan and American territory as a portion of a meridian, and some very amusing and seemingly paradoxical results must occur there, quite opposed to our common notions. Let us, tor example, consider the coming New Year’s Day of 1888. The longitude of Sitka is such that the new year will commence there about 9 o’clock in the morning of next Saturday, December 31 (Greenwich time) ; during the first three hours the new year will only have spread about as far as New Zealand, all the rest of the world will still be in 1887. Any person born in this region will date his birth from January 1888 ; but his cousins, born in Europe many hoars afterwards, will date their birth from 1887. He . will, be the younger in age, .but tho older in date, aud if be chance to inherit family wealth and title, he may possibly afford some day au interesting case for the ingenuity of the lawyers and an apt illustration of the utility of universal time. Fifteen hours later the new year will have reached England, and the midnight peals will joyously herald its advent; after tweuty-four hourß the earth will have completed its revolution, and for ah instant only, before the next day starts, the entire world will bo living under the date of January 1, ISBB. But, now, let us for a moment consider the case of the people living on the American side of the line: The first of January will have only just commenced for them, and they will have to «ivait twentyfour hours longer before it will terminate ; it follows from this that each day exists on some part of the earth for forty-eight hours and for the same reason the year endures for 366 days ; during the wtiole of tho first twenty-four hours we have 1887 on one side of the line and 1888 on the other. A Russian can at any time cross the borders and spend yesterday with his friends, or an American can enter Russia (where he will find it to-morrow) and enjoy the New Year’s dinner with his Russian neighbors and return home in ample time to spend the evening of the old year with his family. If ho astride on the boundary line there will be an instant during which his feet will be the one in yesterday morning, the other in yesterday night, while his body will be still in to-day—that is, the day, just expiring—and, if he enjoys the position, he may remain there throughout a day forty-eight hourri long. Tha whole problem is an in-

structivo oue, and sufficiently interesting to be more generally known and understood., . Chambers’ next says :—‘Let us suppose it agreed that bells should be rung all over tho world for the whole ilay on some particular anniversary say, Christmas Day. This chime, then, would first be heard at Easter Island, and that at twenty minutes past seven by our Greenwich time in the morning of December 24. After the ringing had been going on there for three hours, the bells of the Sandwich Islands would join in chorus. Two hours later we should hear those of New Zealand and the .. Fiji Is'anrl. Rather more than another two hours later, aDd Adelaide and Japan would 4 salute the happy morn’ with their tintinnabulations. And while all the rest of Polynesia and Australasia was thus vocal with melody, an ominus sullen silence would reign in the Philippine Islands, to which no * Babe in Bethlehem born ’ • would bo . heralded for full tweutyfour hours yet. Disregarding these belated Spaniards, the music reaches the Asiatic continent; Bombay takes up the tale four hours after Adelaide ; St. Petersburg, four hours after Bombay ; and our own 4 Bow Bells’ would pea! forth two hours after St. Petersburg , that is, sixteen hours and forty minutes after the : first clang at Easter Island. The Azore Islands would commence their ringing, last of all European bells, being a full hour arid a half later than London. New York would follow five hours after us ; and Denver City, on the 4 Great Divide,’ about two hours after New York—that is to. say, "'just about the time when the bells of Easter Island, having rung through their' twenty-four hours would be stopping. ’"'Alaskai still farther weßt on the continent of America,' steps forward three hours after Easter -Island has finished ; and finally, the Philippine islanders cominenoe to wake the echoes when all their neighbors are sinking into' silence, five,*: hours after Alaska has begun, and about eight hours after the last note on Easter Island. It is now about four., o’clock in the afternoon of the 25th With us, and as'the Philippine bells have still their twenty-four hours to ring, Christmas Day, which, began at twenty minutes past seven in the morning of tho 24th, will not be. oyer till four in the afternoon of the 26th.’