It is customary to change the name of the day at midnight. Thus at the stroke of midnight, anywhere, Sunday gives place to Monday. Suppose, then, that the day when we see the sun on the meridian at Greenwich happens to be Sunday. Sunday will then be, so to speak, twelve hours old at Greenwich, because it began there at the preceding midnight. Sunday will be only seven hours old at New York, where it also began at the preceding midnight. In California, 45°, or three hours, still farther west than New York, Sunday will be only four hours old, since the local time there is only four hours after midnight. Go on over the Pacific Ocean, until we arrive at a point 180°, or twelve hours, west of Greenwich. There, evidently, Sunday will just have been born, the preceding day, Saturday, having expired at the stroke of midnight. Now if we just step over that line of 180° in what day shall we be? It cannot be Sunday, because Sunday has just begun on the line itself. It cannot be Saturday, because that would be counting backward. Evidently it can be no other than Monday. Let us examine this a little more closely. It is Sunday noon at Greenwich. We now go round the earth eastward instead of westward. At 90°, or six hours, east of Greenwich, we find that it is 6 P.M. Sunday and at 180°, or twelve hours, east of Greenwich we find that it is Sunday midnight, or in other words Monday morning. But the line of 180° _east_ of Greenwich coincides with the line of 180° _west_ of Greenwich, which we formerly approached from the opposite direction. So we see that we were right in concluding that in stepping over that line from the east to the west side, we were passing from Sunday into Monday. It is on that line that each day vanishes and its successor takes its place. It is the “date-line” for the whole earth, chosen by the common consent of every civilised nation, just as we have seen that the meridian of Greenwich is the common reference line for reckoning longitude. It lies entirely in the Pacific Ocean, hardly touching any island, and it was chosen for this very reason, because if it ran over inhabited lands, like Europe or America, it would cause endless confusion. Situated as it is, it causes no trouble except to sea captains, and very little to them. If a ship crosses the line going westward the captain jumps his log-book one day forward. If it is, for instance, Wednesday noon, east of the line he calls it Thursday noon, as soon as he has passed over. If he is going eastward he drops back a day on crossing the line, as from Thursday noon to Wednesday noon. The date-line theoretically follows the 180th meridian, but, in fact, in order to avoid certain groups of islands, it bends about a little, while keeping its general direction from north to south.