6. Then come what are called "matters taken at the commencement of public business." These are the presentation of bills without an order of the House or under the ten-minute rule, and motions by a minister relating to the conduct of business to be decided without amendment or debate. 7. Finally comes the regular business of the sitting, in the form of notices of motions or orders of the day. The distinction between these two classes of business is not easy to explain with precision;[306:1] but for our purpose it is unimportant, except so far as one class has precedence over the other. Now the government has authority to arrange the order of its own business as it pleases;[306:2] and in relation to private members, orders of the day practically mean bills, and notices of motion mean resolutions and other matters that are not bills. The application of the distinction comes, therefore, to this, that of the sittings set apart for private members, Friday is reserved for their bills, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays after a quarter past eight o'clock for their other motions.[306:3] [Sidenote: Order at Evening Sittings.] At a quarter past eight o'clock the first business is a motion for adjournment on an urgent matter of public business, in the occasional instances where leave has been obtained at the afternoon sitting to make it. Next follows any postponed private business that may have been assigned to that evening; and then come the notices of motions and orders of the day. By the new arrangement with its definite time for certain business, the work of the House is better distributed. There is no longer the same danger that the discussion of a private bill or of a motion to adjourn, or an interminable series of questions, will unexpectedly cut a great piece out of the hours when the House is most crowded, and the leading men are waiting to debate a great public measure. At the afternoon sitting the regular business of the day is reached at a quarter before four, or very little later, and it proceeds without interruption until a quarter before eight. After that hour--unless there is an opposed private bill, which does not often take long, or by chance a motion to adjourn--the regular business, which may not be the same as at the afternoon sitting, begins again, and goes on until eleven. With the habits of slack attendance when nothing is expected, and the necessity for a presence in force when a division that touches the Treasury Bench may be taken, it is a matter of no small import to be able to forecast the business of a sitting. The severe pressure for time has thus brought about a minute allotment of the hours at each sitting for definite kinds of business, and the same cause has produced a similar, although less exact, distribution in the work of the session as a whole. [Sidenote: Order of Business for the Session.]