ON THE I'llOGRESS OF SCIENCE. VII 



be recommended to the authors of scientific communications, in all 

 cases where the expense or labor involved would not be too great, to 

 give the metric equivalents of the weights and measures mentioned. 

 That treatises explaining the metric system, with diagrams, should be 

 forthwith laid before the public. That works on arithmetic should 

 contain metric tables of weights and measures, with suitable exercises 

 on those tables ; and that inspectors of schools should examine candi- 

 dates for pupil-teachers in the metric system. That in reports made 

 to the British Association, degrees of heat and cold be given accord- 

 ing to both the Centigrade and Fahrenheit thermometers ; and that 

 the scales of thermometers constructed for scientific purposes be 

 divided both according to the Centigrade and Fahrenheit scales ; 

 and that barometric scales be divided into fractions of the meter, as 

 well as into those of the foot and inch. 



In the discussion which followed the presentation of the report of 

 the Committee, Sir John Bowring stated that at the recent Postal 

 Congress at Paris, at which 16 governments in Europe and America 

 were represented, a resolution was unanimously adopted that the 

 metric system should be universally adopted for postal communication, 

 and that if adopted as a principle, it would afford the greatest possi- 

 ble facility for the settlement of accounts and intercommunication 

 generally. The second fact was this, that in China, where there were 

 agglomerated no less than 400,000,000 of human beings, the decimal 

 system universally prevailed, and he had never heard of a boy of 

 seven years who made a mistake in any account. He had even heard 

 savages say that the decimal and metric system must have come from 

 God. They found it the greatest blessing, because, having their ten 

 fingers, they always carried with them the means of settling their 

 accounts. 



A deputation from the chemical section of the Association, through 

 Prof. Williamson, bore testimony to the results of the experience of 

 chemists in their use of the metric system in operations of daily 

 occurrence, and stated that working chemists, with very few excep- 

 tions, were in the habit of using the metric system in almost all their 

 experimental operations, and that they derived from it an advantage 

 which nothing could induce them to sacrifice or exchange for that 

 absence of system which at present prevailed in England. Profs. 

 Owen and Hoffman gave it as their opinion that the discordancy in 

 the systems of weights and measures of different countries is so great, 

 and so much time and labor is required to convert the weights and 

 measures of one country into their equivalents of a foreign system, 

 that practically the knowledge of one nation was a sealed book to the 

 scientific men of others. And as to the facility with which the system 



