THE SUNDIAL & THE GARDEN.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1097, 8 April 1911, Page 11

THE SUNDIAL & THE GARDEN.

AN OLD-WORLD HABIT. Now that old gardens are being replenished and new ones started, there is every year a demand for sundials (writes Constance Beerbohm in an English paper): Charles Lamb, once putting forth a plea for the revival of tho old timekeepers, wrote of them as seeming coevals with that time which they measured, taking their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, and holding correspondence with the fountain of light. . "What a dead thing a clock is!" he wrote in his own inimitable way. "Its pert or solemn dullness compared with the simple, altar-iiko structure and silent language of tho old diall Why is it almost everywhere vanished ? Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise ! ' "It wa.s the measure appropriate for sweet plants ar.d flowers to grow by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and bo led by."

Graceful Designs. Charles Lamb would have no need to cry in these days, "Why is the sun-

dial almost everywhere vanished?" The renascence of the old timekeeper is a very real thing. The kind most in demand is the horizontal one, with a pedestal of stone or marble, while an ingenious ' sundial pedestal that is also 1 the least costly of any is made out of the trunk of an old tree, with th'i dial placed on top. If the dials be of metal the most haiidwmo. are of brOnze; .but there ; are beautiful old and new brass dials to be had, and these may either be engraved or raised with figures, merely with the Roman numerals and the all-importalit gnomen, or else elaborately chased with designs, symbols, and mottoes. Very frequently the face cf the dial is of stone cut only to show the outlino of tho figures. « Tho finest pedestals, I think, are those which are modelled upon old Italian designs, though some of the old English ones run them very close for beauty. There are square and round . pillars and others of lonic and Byzantine design; also vase forms, either with or without carving. Different Kinds. Vertical sundials, more commonly seen in Scotland than England, are carved in stone or painted in soft, harmonious tones, not only on tho outside'walls of churchcs, out on dwellinghouses. These are charming in dim reds, blues, and greens on grey plaster, or carved in relief and set into a stone. But infrequently you may come on a dial set in a window so that- the shadowfalls on tho glass and shows utf the time as from a clock face outside. In America, where there is quite a rage for dials, they are making these in. coloured and leaded glass. • , The simplest of all dials that they have adopted on the other side of the Atlantic is in shape of a hollow cylinder.

Placing it in the Carden. Among graceful verses to be found engraved on dials are these: The hours, unless the hours be bright, ; It is not mine to mark. I am the prophet of the light, Dumb when the hour is dark. Time flies, sans rise, and shadows fall; Let it go by; so love is over all. I spend my life among the flowers, And only mark tho sunny hours. Time passeth away, death draweth nigh,' Therefore men do right and fear God. In placing a dial it should, of course, bo full in the sun and within convenient reach of the walkers in tho garden, or, if possible, the dwellers in the'house. The convergence of several paths or any central feature is an appropriate spot on which to set it up: Only an expert can set a dial properly, and so as to bo perfectly "exact it must bo set by a spirit level. To quoto an authority: "Under the most perfect conditions the dial will not agree with tho clock except on four days of the year, April 15, June 15, September 1, and December 24. Clock time is called mean time and dial timo apparent time. This difference is caused by the fact that we reckon only 365 days in the year, while there arc really 365 with a quarter over, and also by the movement of the earth round the sun."