This is the popular reckoning, and that marked upon the instruments which record time for ordinary purposes, and by these the meals and other industrial and domestic epochs are fixed.  But for purposes of exact calculation, the day, beginning an hour before mean sunrise, is distributed into twelve periods, or antoi, of a little more than two terrestrial hours each.  These again are subdivided by twelve into periods of a little more than 10m., 50s., 2-1/2s., and 5/24s respectively; but of these the second and last are alone employed in common speech.  The uniform employment of twelve as the divisor and multiplier in tables of weight, distance, time, and space, as well as in arithmetical notation, has all the conveniences of the decimal system of France, and some others besides due to the greater convenience of twelve as a base.  But as regards the larger divisions of time, the Martials are placed at a great disadvantage by the absence of any such intermediate divisions as the Moon has suggested to Terrestrials.  The revolutions of the satellites are too rapid and their periods too brief to be of service in dividing their year of 668-2/3 solar days.  Martial civilisation having taken its rise within the tropics—­indeed the equatorial continents, which only here and there extend far into the temperate zone, and two minor continents in the southern ocean, are the only well-peopled portions of the planet—­the demarcation of the seasons afforded by the solstices have been comparatively disregarded.  The year is divided into winter and summer, each beginning with the Equinox, and distinguished as the North and South summer respectively.  But these being exceedingly different in duration—­the Northern half of the planet having a summer exceeding by seventy-six days that of the Southern hemisphere—­are of no use as accurate divisions of time.  Time is reckoned, accordingly, from the first day of the year; the 669th day being incomplete, and the new year beginning at the moment of the Equinox with the 0th day.  In remote ages the lapse of time was marked by festivals and holidays occurring at fixed periods; but the principle of utility has long since abolished all anniversaries, except those fixed by Nature, and these pass without public observance and almost without notice.

The climate is comparatively equable in the Northern hemisphere, the summer of the South being hotter and the winter colder, as the planet is much nearer the Sun during the former.  On an average, the solar disc seems about half as large as to eyes on Earth; but the continents lying in a belt around the middle of the planet, nearly the whole of its population enjoy the advantages of tropical regularity.  There are two brief rainy seasons on the Equator and in its neighbourhood, and one at each of the tropics.  Outside these the cold of winter is aggravated by cloud and mist.  The barometer records from 20 inches to 21 inches at the sea-level.  Storms are slight, brief, and infrequent; the tides are insignificant;