The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-09 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sirt,—l have just returned from Paris, and when there I
succeeded in procuring from the best authority (news.
Le Roy and Son, watchmakers to the. King of the French)
a history of the Time-Gun in the Palais Royale. The
following translation of this document may be intresting to
your readers, more particularly as Time. Guns will in all
likelihood be ere long placed in every impGrtant town of the
kingdom. I was gratified to find on my recent visit to
Newcastle and Shields, the great satisfaction the inhabi•
tants of these towns have with their audible signal, and
that Sunderland is contemplating to have one, also Aber-
deen. I was glad during my visit to the continent to see
from the Times that Glasgow has established a Time-Gun.
I am informed that four are spoken of for London, one to
be placed on the Tower, another on the Regent's Park,
Hyde Park, and St. James'. I may here mention that it
was from this small Time-Gun in Paris I got the notion,
nearly 20 years ago, of an audible bignal, and which has
been so happily established in our own city.—l am, &c.,
JOHN HHWAT.

Edinburgh, 12, St. Andrew-square,
7th October, 1863.

[TRANSLATION.]

The celebrated cannon of the Palais Royale was made in
1819 by a gunsmith of the Rue Richelieu, who proposed to
the Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis Philippe, to
establish it in the garden of the Palais Royale. It was
placed there that same year on the site where it is to this
day. It cost 300 f. Its form is that of a howitzer ; the
diameter of the inside is five centimetres. It is loaded with
50 grammes (the unit French weight) of powder, costing
Bf. the kilogramme (1,000 grammes), each shot therefore
costing about 20c. The noise of the firing cannot be heard
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beyond the buildings of the Palais Royale. It is firmly
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It is set facing the east, to indicate by its detonation the
passage of the sun over the meridian of Paris. A lens or
magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun, which
sets fire to the powder. That lens is moveable upon a gra-
duated marked semicircle ; thus it can be displaced high or
low, according to the height of the sun above the horizon,
each degree corresponding to a displacement of five days.
The administration of the palace give 150 francs a-year to
the gunsmith, who is the inventor of it, to take care of it,
and to keep it in working order as long as the state o f the
atmosphere permits. The conditions imposed upon him for
his service do not seem to be very strict, and the adminis-
tration do not seem to attach much importance to the exec •
titudo of his duty. Amateurs who come to the garden to
await the detonation, in order to put their watches correct,
are apt to register great variations. The majority do not
reckon the difference between the real time and the mean
time ; and we must say that the gunsmith himself does not
know or that he does not seem to trouble himself muc
about it. At the moment which we write these lines (Sep-
tember, 1863), the sun passed the meridian at Paris at 11h
51w 235, and we see the gunsmith upon the point of setting
his cannon at 11h 56m, that is four minutes after the pas-
sage of the sun. We hear the detonation at 12h 4in 30s
mean time, while it ought to have been heard at 11h 51ro
225. This complaisant toleration has given rise to the fol-
lowing popular saying—" The cannon of the Palais Royale
is good (boo) to tell the time to the soldiers and nurse-
maids." We hope that the members of the Observatory at
Paris determine to take as a model the regularity and pre-
cision of the cannon at Edinburgh.

THE LOSS OF A HULL STEAMER,—The loss of
the screw steamer Zealand, of Hull, with her cap-
tain
(William Lewis) and six of Vr crew, appears now, by
the continued absence of any tidings of the ship or her
crew, to be all but certain.

THE COLOSSAL MAP OF LONDON now being
issued by the Messrs, Cassell, the eminent publishers, is on
the magnificent scale of Able inches to the mile.

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THE QUEEN IN SCOTLAND.

BALMORAL, Oct. 7.
The Queen, accompanied by Princess Louise, and
attended by Lady Churchill, went out yesterday
morning.

In the afternoon, the Queen, accompanied by the
Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia and Princess
Louise, drove round by the Lynn of Muich.
Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse, Princess
Helena, and Prince Arthur, rode up the Glen of
:Ulrich and drove back from Alt-na-Guithasach.