TABLE OF THE WORLD'S TIME STANDARDS
| When it is Noon at Greenwich it is | In | Date of Adopting Standard Time System. | |
| Noon | Great Britain. | ||
| Belgium. | May, 1892. | ||
| Holland. | May, 1892. | ||
| Spain. | January, 1901. | ||
| 1 P.M. | Germany. | April, 1893. | |
| Italy. | November, 1893. | ||
| Denmark. | January, 1894. | ||
| Switzerland. | June, 1894. | ||
| Norway. | January, 1895. | ||
| Austria (railways). | |||
| 1.30 P.M. | Cape Colony. | 1892. | |
| Orange River Colony. | 1892. | ||
| Transvaal. | 1892. | ||
| 2 P.M. | Natal. | September, 1895. | |
| Turkey (railways). | |||
| Egypt. | October, 1900. | ||
| 8 P.M. | West Australia. | February, 1895. | |
| 9 P.M. | Japan. | 1896. | |
| 9.30 P.M. | South Australia. | May, 1899. | |
| 10 P.M. | Victoria. | February, 1895. | |
| New South Wales. | February, 1895. | ||
| Queensland. | February, 1895. | ||
| 11 P.M. | New Zealand. | ||
| In the United States and Canada it is | |||||||
| 4 A.M. by | Pacific Time | when | it is | Noon | at | Greenwich. | |
| 5 A.M. " | Mountain | " | " | " | " | " | " |
| 6 A.M. " | Central | " | " | " | " | " | " |
| 7 A.M. " | Eastern | " | " | " | " | " | " |
| 8 A.M. " | Colonial | " | " | " | " | " | " |
[MOTIONS OF THE EARTH'S POLE]
Students of geology have been puzzled for many years by traces remaining from the period when a large part of the earth was covered with a heavy cap of ice. These shreds of evidence all seem to point to the conclusion that the centre of the ice-covered region was quite far away from the present position of the north pole of the earth. If we are to regard the pole as very near the point of greatest cold, it becomes a matter of much interest to examine whether the pole has always occupied its present position, or whether it has been subject to slow changes of place upon the earth's surface. Therefore, the geologists have appealed to astronomers to discover whether they are in possession of any observational evidence tending to show that the pole is in motion.
Now we may say at once that astronomical research has not as yet revealed the evidence thus expected. Astronomy has been unable to come to the rescue of geological theory. From about the year 1750, which saw the beginning of precise observation in the modern sense, down to very recent times, astronomers were compelled to deny the possibility of any appreciable motion of the pole. Observational processes, it is true, furnished slightly divergent pole positions from time to time. Yet these discrepancies were always so minute as to be indistinguishable from those slight personal errors that are ever inseparable from results obtained by the fallible human eye.
But in the last few years improved methods of observation, coupled with extreme diligence in their application by astronomers generally, have brought to light a certain small motion of the pole which had never before been demonstrated in a reliable way. This motion, it is true, is not of the character demanded by geological theory, for the geologists had been led to expect a motion which would be continuous in the same direction, no matter how slow might be its annual amount; for the vast extent of geologic time would give even the slowest of motions an opportunity to produce large effects, provided its results could be continuously cumulative. Given time enough, and the pole might move anywhere on the earth, no matter how slow might be its tortoise speed.