Daylight and Darkness

Abstract

I AGREE with Mr. W. T. Lynn that the article in NATURE of May 11 (p. 349) leaves “little to be said with regard to the so-called Daylight Saving Bill”; but there is one remark in it to which exception may be taken. This is the statement (p. 350) that it is “easy” to alter one's watch when travelling into a zone where different time is kept, if by “easy” is meant “not inconvenient”. All travellers must have found the inconvenience of the change of time, even when reduced to a minimum through the change being an exact hour. Some inconvenience is unavoidable in travelling, but it is, of course, absurd to cause this inconvenience unnecessarily as the “Daylight Saving Bill” proposes. The inconvenience is such that in a journey to India I found it best never to alter my watch at all, it being simplest to keep to Greenwich time, and mentally make the allowance for local time.