It will, however, be necessary to fix much more than one civil time for Europe.  Therefore I suppose for Europe a whole system of meridians, which, however, ought not to be closer together than 21/2 deg..  The difference of time between these meridians is then only 10 minutes, which, in general, can be considered as an insignificant difference between the civil and the true solar time.  The starting point of this system is the meridian of Greenwich.  To the west the system ought to extend 30 minutes; to the east 21/2 hours, or to a meridian passing near Moscow.

I suppose as time zero the meridian of Greenwich.  The next meridian to the east is meridian 1.  This meridian will not pass far from the Observatory of Paris, because the difference between this meridian 1 and the meridian of Paris is only 40 seconds, an insignificant difference in civil life.  The meridian 1 can be called the meridian of Paris, or French meridian.

The second meridian (to the east of Greenwich) does not touch Utrecht, but will pass so close that the time of this city could, without the least inconvenience, be regulated as if the difference of time between Greenwich and Utrecht were exactly 20 minutes.  The second meridian would also pass almost as close to Amsterdam, (22s.,) and would not be far from Marseilles, (1m. 29s.) In the vicinity of the third meridian we have, first, Bern, (16s.;) next, a little further, Turin, (42s.) The fourth meridian is close to Hamburg, Altona, and Gottingen, (respectively 6s. and 14s.) Not far from the same meridian is Christiania, although at a distance of a little over 2 minutes.  The fifth meridian passes also close to three large cities—­Rome, (5s.,) Leipzig, (26s.,) and Copenhagen, (20s.)

The sixth meridian does not touch any city of importance, but it coincides very nearly with the meridian adopted for the normal civil time in Sweden; the difference amounts only to 15 seconds.

The seventh meridian touches the little town of Brieg, in the vicinity of Breslau, and Koenigsberg is situated two minutes from the eighth.  The ninth meridian passes less than one minute to the west of Abo, and is situated at a distance of only a few seconds from Mistra, a town in Greece.  The tenth meridian almost touches Helsingfors in Finland.  As regards the eleventh meridian, I have not been able to find any locality of importance exactly so situated that it merits a place in this list, but I can, however, mention the cities of Minsk and Jassy.  The twelfth meridian is situated 1m. 14s. to the west of the Academy of Sciences, in St. Petersburg, and the distance from Kiew is about the same.  It is not necessary to continue the enumeration of the other meridians to the east by intervals of 10 minutes, but I will mention that Moscow is situated 2h. 30m. 17s. to the east