The state of affairs at the present time has been adjusted by a sort of informal agreement. An arbitrary line has been drawn on the map near the 180th longitude circle, and it has been decided that the islands on the east side of this line shall count their longitudes west from Greenwich, and those west of the line shall count longitude east from Greenwich. Thus Samoa is nearly 180 degrees west of Greenwich, while the Fiji Islands are nearly 180 degrees east. Yet the islands are very near each other, though the arbitrary line passes between them. As a result, when it is Sunday in Samoa it is Monday in the Fiji Islands. The arbitrary line described here is sometimes called the International Date-Line. It does not pass very near the Philippine Islands, which are situated in about 120 degrees east longitude, and, therefore, use a time about eight hours later than Greenwich. New York, being about 74 degrees west of Greenwich, is about five hours earlier in time. Consequently, as we may remark in passing, Philippine time is about thirteen hours later than New York time. Thus, five o'clock, Sunday morning, May 1st, in Manila, would correspond to four o'clock, Saturday afternoon, April 30th, in New York. There is another kind of time which we shall explain briefly--the so-called "standard," or railroad time, which came into general use in the United States some few years ago, and has since been generally adopted throughout the world. It requires but a few moments' consideration to see that the accidental situation of the different large cities in any country will cause their local times to differ by odd numbers of hours, minutes, and seconds. Thus a great deal of inconvenience has been caused in the past. For instance, a train might leave New York at a certain hour by New York time. It would then arrive in Buffalo some hours later by New York time. But it would leave Buffalo by Buffalo time, which is quite different. Thus there would be a sort of jump in the time-table at Buffalo, and it would be a jump of an odd number of minutes. It would be different in different cities, and very hard to remember. Indeed, as each railway usually ran its trains by the time used in the principal city along its line, it might happen that three or four different railroad times would be used in a single city where several roads met. This has all been avoided by introducing the standard time system. According to this the whole country is divided into a series of time zones, fifteen degrees wide, and so arranged that the middle line of each zone falls at a point whose longitude from Greenwich is 60, 75, 90, 105, or 120 degrees. The times at these middle lines are, therefore, earlier than Greenwich time by an even number of hours. Thus, for instance, the 75-degree line is just five even hours earlier than Greenwich time. All cities simply use the time of the nearest one of these special lines.