considerations of convenience in all the matters to which it applies,
is one of difficulties probably insuperable. The certainty, however,
that objections may be raised to every scheme, renders me less timid
in offering my own remarks; which are much at your service.

I first comment upon your expression of "Standard Time... applicable
to railway traffic only." But do you mean this as affecting the
transactions between one railway and another railway, or as affecting
each railway and the local interests (temporal and others) of the
towns which it touches? The difference is so great that I should be
disposed to adopt it as marking very strongly the difference to be
made between the practices of railways among themselves and the
practices of railways towards the public; and will base a system on
that difference.

As regards the practices of railways among themselves: if the various
railways of America are joined and inosculated as they are in England,
it appears to me indispensable that they have one common standard
_among themselves_: say Washington Observatory time. But this is only
needed for the office-transactions between the railways; it may be
kept perfectly private; never communicated to the public at all. And I
should recommend this as the first step.

There will then be no difficulty in deducing, from these private
Washington times, the accurate local times at those stations (whose
longitude is supposed to be fairly well known, as a sailor with a
sextant can determine one in a few hours) which the railway
authorities may deem worthy of that honour; generally the termini of
railways. Thus we shall have a series of bases of local time, of
authoritative character, through the country.

Of such bases _we_ have two, Greenwich and Dublin: and they are
separated by a sea-voyage. In the U.S. of America there must be a
greater number, and probably not so well separated. Still it is
indispensable to adopt such a system of local centers.

No people in this world can be induced to use a reckoning which does
not depend clearly upon the sun. In all civilized countries it depends
(approximately) on the sun's meridian passage. Even the sailor on
mid-ocean refers to that phenomenon. And the solar passage, with
reasonable allowance, 20m. or 30m. one way or another, must be
recognized in all time-arrangements as giving the fundamental
time. The only practical way of doing this is, to adopt for a whole
region the fundamenta