I say certainly, because the result of the former votes being already known, it cannot be doubted on which side the majority will be, and because, from a scientific point of view, having chosen Greenwich as the prime meridian for the calculation of longitude, and having decided to reckon longitude in two directions from zero hours to twenty-four hours, with the sign plus towards the east and minus towards the west, it will be advantageous to make the civil day of Greenwich coincide with the universal day, if we would have an easy formula for passing from local to cosmic time.

So many of the resolutions submitted to the Congress by Mr. RUTHERFURD having been approved one after another, the plan that our colleague has carefully studied will be accepted in its entirety; but it will be impossible for the Conference to know in all their details other plans which, perhaps, would not be less worthy of attention.

Is the resolution adopted by a majority of the Congress the best?  Should we reach the end of the reform in complete harmony with the hopes of all the governments represented here?  On the contrary hypothesis, it seems to me, that the sessions of this Congress will only be another step towards that reform, but not the reform itself.

If the majority of the Congress, in accordance with the logical consequence of its work, adopts as the cosmic time the civil time of Greenwich, that decision will be contrary to the most ancient ideas of the human race.  For many centuries the day has been reckoned as starting from the east, and the world will not easily abandon the traditions of its predecessors.

The civil day of the world commences near the anti-meridian of Rome, Greenwich, or Paris.  Therefore it is not natural that one of these meridians should be chosen as the point of departure of dates.

Really, one phenomenon cannot be the commencement of a series of phenomena if there is another which precedes it periodically.

If the majority, as is logical, adopts the formula, “cosmic time=local time-longitude,” and applies in the calculation longitude with the signs plus and minus, according as the longitude is east and west, the system will be source of frequent mistakes, and those, in their turn, will be the cause of disastrous accidents, especially on railroads.

Let us take the 31st of December, for instance.  It is three o’clock at a point nine hours east of Greenwich; at the same moment they will count at Greenwich eighteen civil hours of the 30th of the same month, after the actual manner of reckoning the civil day, and that civil time of Greenwich will be the cosmic time.

Apply to the proposed example the formula which I suppose the majority of the Congress will adopt, and the result will be a negative quantity, minus six hours—­a result not sufficiently comprehensible in itself, and one that could not be easily applied by the general public.

Can a majority prevail in questions, such as those we are speaking of, simply by the force of numbers?  The whole world for several centuries thought that the earth was the centre of our planetary system; in fact, until an insignificant minority rose against this theory, for a long time considered by their ancestors indisputable.