VI PREFACE. 



treatise, adapted for the perusal of non-mathe- 

 matical readers. On the completion of this, it was 

 suggested by the publisher of that work to collect 

 and reprint them together, a proposal the more 

 welcome, as it afforded an opportunity for bring- 

 ing together several other pieces of a somewhat 

 similar character, some of which, though not 

 properly characterized as '' Lectures," it seemed 

 desirable to reproduce. More especially, it ap- 

 peared to the Author an imperative duty to let 

 no opportunity pass of recalling the attention of the 

 public to the great question of the proposed aban- 

 donment of our national system of weights and 

 measures, and adoption in its stead of the metri- 

 cal system of the French, with its unit, the metre, 

 in place of the English yard, which has been so 

 actively, and, in his opinion, so mischievously 

 urged on Parliament ; the agitation in favour of 

 which only sleeps for the present, in the view of 

 allowing the public mind to familiarize itself with 

 the idea under a Permissive Act, to be assuredly 

 brought forward again with renewed activity, and 

 under a more intense and prolonged pressure (to 

 be met by a more concentrated and determined 

 resistance); on no distant occasion. 



