of Greenwich as the origin of longitude, the natural thing for it to do would be to have the international day, the universal day, begin from the 180th meridian from Greenwich—­that is, to coincide with the Greenwich civil day.  That meridian passes, as I said before, outside of New Zealand, and outside of the Fijee Islands; it goes over only a very small portion of inhabited country.  It appears to me, therefore, that inasmuch as there must be an absolute break or discontinuity in time in passing round the earth—­a break of twenty-four hours—­it is much more convenient that this break should take place in the uninhabited part of the earth than in the very centre of civilization.

If we adopt the universal day which coincides with the civil day at Greenwich, then you will be able to have complete continuity of local time over the whole earth, in harmonious relation with the universal day, except at the break which necessarily takes place on the 180th meridian.  Otherwise this will not be possible.  For instance, according to the system proposed by the resolution, the local time corresponding, say, to 0 hours of Monday at Greenwich, would, in passing round the earth to the eastward from the 180th meridian, gradually change from 12 hours of Sunday to 12 hours of Monday; and, on returning to that meridian, the break of time would occur, and one day would appear to be lost.  But complete continuity both in the days and hours, and harmony with the universal day, that is, the Greenwich civil day, would be preserved for the whole earth, excepting on crossing the 180th meridian.

The result of the system which was proposed at Rome would be to cause the break of dates to take place at Greenwich at noon, so that the morning hours of the civil day would have a different universal date from the afternoon hours, and this would be the case all over Europe.  But if the universal day be made to correspond to the civil day of Greenwich, and the longitude is counted east in one direction and west in another direction to the 180th meridian, these difficulties would be overcome, and a perfectly simple rule would suffice for converting local into universal time.  As regards what was said upon the subject of longitude being plus or minus, according as you move to the east or west, it appears to me that there is a positive, clear, and rational reason for calling longitude eastward plus and longitude westward minus.  The time is later to the east, and therefore the hour is indicated by a higher number.  In converting universal into local time, if the place is east of Greenwich, you add the longitude to the universal time, and therefore increase the number of the hour; if the place be west of Greenwich, you subtract the longitude, and therefore diminish the number of the hour.  It is natural, therefore, to call east longitude positive and the other negative.

It appears to me also that the passage of the sun over the meridian is, in reality, what may be called the index of the day, the day consisting of 24 hours, distributed equally on either side of the meridian.  Noon of the universal day would thus coincide with the time of the sun passing the initial meridian.  There is perfect consistency, therefore, in adopting the reckoning of longitude and time that is proposed in the resolution before us.  It is a rational and symmetrical method.