A Cape Town Correspondent of Notes and Queries describes a Sun-dial and compass in his possession, made by “Johann Willebrand, in Augsburg, 1848:” it has a curious perpetual calendar attached, and is of highly finished work in silver, parcel-gilt. Another Sun-dial and compass is mentioned as made by Butterfield, at Paris: it is small, of silver, and horizontal; upon its face are engraved dials for several latitudes, and at the back a table of principal cities; it is set by a compass, and the gnomon adjusted by a divided arc. The N. point of the compass-box is fixed in a position to allow for variation, probably at Paris; and, judging from this, it would appear to have been made about 1716.[[9]]
We should also notice the pocket ring-dial, such as that which gave occasion to the Fool in the Forest of Arden to “moral on the time:”
And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says, very wisely, “It is ten o’clock.”
This is a ring of brass, much like a miniature dog-collar, and has, moving in a groove in its circumference, a narrower ring with a boss, pierced by a small hole to admit a ray of light. The latter ring is made movable, to allow for the varying declination of the sun in the several months of the year, and the initials of these are marked in the ascending and descending scale on the larger ring, which bears also the motto:
Set me right, and use me well,
And I ye time to you will tell.
The hours are lined and numbered on the opposite concavity. When the boss of the sliding ring is set, and the ring is suspended by the ring directly towards the sun, a ray of light passing through the hole in the boss impinges on the concave surface, and the hour is told with fair accuracy. Mr. Thomas Q. Couch, of Bodmin, thus describes this Dial in Notes and Queries, 3d series, No. 36. Mr. Charles Knight, in his Pictorial Shakspeare, has engraved a dial of this kind, as an illustration of As you like it.
Mr. Redmond, of Liverpool, describes the old pocket ring-dial as common in the county of Wexford some twenty-five years ago: there was hardly a farm-house where one could not be had. The same Correspondent of Notes and Queries, 3d series, No. 39, describes a door-sill marked with the hour for every day in the year: the sill had a full southern aspect, so that when the sun shone, the time could be read as correctly as by any watch.