ing words in the
form--

"So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone
down."

The narrative is complete as a record of the healing of king Hezekiah
and of the sign given to him to assure him that he should recover;
complete for all the ordinary purposes of a narrative, and for readers
in general. But for any purpose of astronomical analysis the narrative
is deficient, and it must be frankly confessed that it does not lie
within the power of astronomy to make any use of it.

It has been generally assumed that it was an actual sundial upon which
this sign was seen. We do not know how far back the art of dialling
goes. The simplest form of dial is an obelisk on a flat pavement, but it
has the very important drawback that the graduation is different for
different times of the year. In a properly constructed dial the edge of
the style casting the shadow should be made parallel to the axis of the
earth. Consequently a dial for one latitude is not available without
alteration when transferred to another latitude. Some fine types of
dials on a large scale exist in the observatories built by Jai Singh.
The first of these--that at Delhi--was probably completed about 1710
A.D. They are, therefore, quite modern, but afford good illustrations
of the type of structure which we can readily conceive of as having been
built in what has been termed the Stone Age of astronomy. The principal
of these buildings, the Samrat Yantra, is a long staircase in the
meridian leading up to nothing, the shadow falling on to a great
semicircular arc which it crosses. The slope of the staircase is, of
course, parallel to the earth's axis.

It has been suggested that if such a dial were erected at Jerusalem, and
the style were that for a tropical latitude, at certain times of the
year the shadow would appear to go backward for a short time. Others,
again, have suggested that if a small portable dial were tilted the same
phenomenon would show itself. It is, of course, evident that no such
suggestion at all accords with the narrative. Hezekiah was now in the
fourteenth year of his reign, the dial--if dial it was--was made by his
father, and the "miracle" would have been reproduced day by day for a
considerable part of each year, and after the event it would have been
apparent to every one that the "miracle" continued to be reproduced. If
this had been the case, it would say very little for the astronomical
science of the wi