Another Correspondent of Notes and Queries, 2d series, No. 38, has an ingenious pocket-dial, sold by one T. Clarke: it is merely a card, with a small plummet hanging by a thread, and a gnomon, which lies flat on the card, but, when lifted up, casts the shadow to indicate the hour of the day, and also the hours of sunrise and sunset.
In the United Service Museum, Whitehall, is a Sun-dial, with a burning-glass arranged to fire a small gun at noon; also a large Universal Dial, with a circle showing minutes; and another large Universal Dial, with horizontal plate and spirit-level.
Suppose we collect a few of the monitory inscriptions on dials in various places. Hazlitt, in a graceful paper “On a Sun-dial,” tells us that
Horas non numero nisi serenas
is the motto of a Sun-dial near Venice; and the same line is painted in huge letters over the Sun-dial in front of an old farmhouse near Farnworth, in Lancashire.
At Hebden Bridge, in Yorkshire, is this quaint motto:
Quod petis, umbra est.
Canon Bowles, in his love of the solemn subject, prescribed the following, with paraphrastic translations:
Morning Sun.—Tempus volat.
Oh! early passenger, look up—be wise,