Pulkowa, Vienna, or Rome, our reform may be accepted for the moment,
especially if it offers immediate advantages in economy; but it will
contain within it a vice which will prevent its becoming definitive,
and we are not willing to participate in action which will not be
definitive.

Whatever we may do, the common prime meridian will always be a crown
to which there will be a hundred pretenders. Let us place the crown on
the brow of science, and all will bow before it.

Commander SAMPSON, Delegate of the United States, said that he thought
that the Delegate of France, Professor JANSSEN, had explained very
fully the advantages of a neutral meridian, but he thought that he had
not explained how we are to determine the neutral meridian. He added
that he quite agreed with Professor ADAMS and Professor NEWCOMB, that
to establish a prime meridian it is necessary to refer its position to
an astronomical observatory.

He stated further that if a meridian were selected passing through the
Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, it must be referred to some initial point
whose longitude is known, and the consequence of that would be, it
seemed to him, that the prime meridian selected would still be
dependent upon some national observatory, and that to select a
meridian at random without reference to any observatory would lead to
the utmost confusion, and, he had no doubt, would not be entertained
by any one.

Prof. JANSSEN, Delegate of France. When my honorable colleague,
Commander SAMPSON, reads the remarks which I have just made, he will
see that I have very fully shown what characterizes a neutral or