88 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



representing respectively "florins," "cents," and "mils." 

 The first step was actually taken in 1849, when the florin 

 was coined, and the complete reform would undoubtedly have 

 been carried out and extended to weights and measures also 

 as far as practicable but for the opposition of the " metric " 

 party, who have regularly blocked any systematic reform of the 

 national measures. They have realised throughout that with 

 a rational coinage system the crusade against the national 

 standards would be almost hopeless. 



They invariably lump together the present coinage system, 

 which is indefensilDle, with the standards of weight and mea- 

 sure, and draw a supposed parallel. But the imaginary 

 parallel is a fallacy. Weights and measures deal with en- 

 tities and qualities outside our own control. Whether we 

 weigh a load of ballast or compute the distance of a star 

 we ai'e engaged in investigating realities — relations and inter- 

 relations between ourselves and the universe without — and 

 must adapt our methods, as conveniently as we may, to things 

 as we find them. Coinage, on the other hand, is entirely 

 artificial. From first to last the form it takes is under our 

 own control ; it should be adapted to the radix of computa- 

 tion. Our coinage is not so adapted, and to that extent 

 is irrational. Further, it conforms only very imperfectly to 

 weight and measure standards. We need not go further than 

 to America for a practical example. In the United States 

 and Canada the coinage has been decimalised, the weights 

 and measures remaining unaltered. 



We come now to perhaps the greatest and most audacious 

 of the fallacies propounded by the advocates of the meter. 

 We find it stated that it would save so much of the time at 

 present given to the study of arithmetic as would amount 

 to a complete revolution. Last year it was asserted by an 

 Australian writer that "compound calculations would be 

 no longer necessary, and need not be taught in schools." 

 Children, he said, were "kept at school learning arithmetic 

 from one to two years unnecessarily because of archaic and 

 antiquated rules and clumsy and involved methods." Every 

 mathematician, every qualified teacher, knows tliat this is not 

 the truth. Every one engaged in any kind of calculation has 

 necessarily to deal with varying ratios ; one of the chief pur- 

 poses of the study of arithmetic is to qualify us to equate 

 them, and it is to assist us in this work that artificially fixed 

 standards are required. Fallacious as the assertion is, it is 

 the stock plea of the metrists. It is the argument of the 

 spelling-reformers borrowed and misapplied. Years of school 

 life are wasted in learning by rote archaic and outworn forms 

 of spelling — forms wliich misrepresent and caricature our 

 speech ; but what chance would a Bill for reforming ortho- 



