How little we really know of ancient China or Japan, where sundials abound. When the history of the horologe of the West still remains imperfect, who will determine that of the East? Let us solve the riddle of Avebury or Stonehenge with certainty before we can decide the age of any other likely form of horologe; let us move the sands of the desert of Egypt and dig down into every ruin of the past before we can hope to fix a date at which mortal man constructed a dial, mural or pedestal, to record the passing of the day. Although priority in the age of the first two groups of dials may remain an uncertainty, yet the third group of portable dials can be safely given a late date. By portable dials I would not have my readers include the tent pole often used by wandering Arabs to cast a shadow, or the possible use of a stone of any size by early man, but the host of small pocket and ring dials made of metal, ivory, wood, or stone that are frequently found in our own land, on the Continent, and in the East. There is no more engrossing study than the age of the sundial, and to those interested in gnomonics any fresh information or unrecorded history is of the greatest importance. It is, however, left to the excavator of buried cities and ancient ruins of the past to shed fresh light upon such a well-worn subject, and the humble historian but faithfully records and hands down to posterity the result of his discoveries. The minutes of to-day are as the hours of yesterday, and the necessity of an accurate time-keeper is in this present century more keenly felt than ever it was in the past. A glance at the sky to determine the position of the sun in respect to well-known landmarks may have sufficed the races of primitive man, but as generation succeeded generation, and regular business occupations and more home life commenced, the observance of stated intervals of the day must have become a necessity; so that, if the old proverb be true, necessity became the mother of invention, and in due course gave birth to the sundial, which, as time went on, developed until it reached the perfect stage in which we find it to-day. Perhaps some day excavations in the Holy Land will reveal fresh forms of horologe that will put into the shade the age of the present dials from ancient Greece, but until then we have little data other than vague allusions to them in the historical records of the past to go upon. It is very doubtful whether ancient Egypt with all its vast learning and resources will ever throw fresh light upon the subject of gnomonics. Situated so close to the Equator, both the horizontal and vertical dials would be of small service.