_Berlin Time_ (Vol. iv., p. 256.).--Is your correspondent very sure that the astronomers of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain begin the day at midnight? I turn to Herschel's _Outlines of Astronomy_ (p. 86.), and I find that astronomers (without any limitation) commenced their day at noon. Sir John Herschel is inclined to think that it would be better to commence at midnight with the world at large. Surely if the foreign astronomers _already did this_, he would not have failed to cite their example, and to remind the English astronomers that they stood alone; but of this he does not give the smallest hint. A LEARNER. Your correspondent DX. is mistaken in supposing that "foreigners ordinarily commence the astronomical day at midnight." With respect to France, in the _Explication et Usage des Articles de la Connaissance des Temps_ it is expressly stated: "Le jour astronomique _commence à midi_." And in the explanation appended to the _Berlin Jahrbuch_, it is in like manner distinctly laid down: "The time which must be always understood, unless it is otherwise particularly expressed, is the mean time of the meridian of the New Berlin Observatory, which is taken to be 44m 14·0s eastward of Paris, and 53m 35·5s eastward of Greenwich. _The beginning of the day is at noon._" The _civil_ day always commences at the midnight preceding this _astronomical_ day. It follows that Sept. 17, 3h 40m 30s Greenwich mean time, is simply Sept. 17, 4h 34m 5·5s Berlin mean time. T. C. Durham. _Ruined Churches_ (Vol. iv., p. 261.).--The old church of St. John in the Wilderness, near Exmouth, can hardly be said to be _in ruins_, in the sense before implied with regard to marriages, &c. It is _dilapidated_, and almost deserted; but on visiting it a few days since, I found it securely locked, the nave weather tight, and sufficiently furnished for baptisms, marriages, and burials, with surplice, two Prayer Books, Bible, table, font, bier, and bell. They had certainly all seen their best days; but on that account perhaps they are supposed to be more in keeping with the general state of the venerable fabric. It is, in fact, the mother church of others in the vicinity, which are only chapels of ease; but as the population increased around them, and fell away, from some cause or other, from the precincts of the old church, it seems to have been deserted and dismantled of everything but what is barely necessary for burials, and an occasional wedding and baptism. It is the south aisle only which has been removed, and that by authority, many years ago; but certainly, it has on that side, and from the want of glass in the fine tower window, a desolate and ruinous appearance. In the churchyard there is a most venerable specimen of a noble yew-tree. H. T. E. Clyst St. George, Oct. 10. 1851.