18S7.] <^0" [Taylor, 



most thorough and philosophical treatise on arithmetic in our language, 

 and such a statement certainly deserves our most serious consideration. 



The masterly and comprehensive report on the suhject of weights and 

 measures, made to Congress in 1821 by Mr. Adams, when Secretary of 

 State, contains the following judgment : "The experience of France has 

 proved that binary, ternary, duodecimal and sexagesimal divisions are as 

 necessary to the practical use of weights and measures, as the decimal 

 divisions are convenient for calculations resulting from them ; and that no 

 plan for introducing the latter can dispense with the continued use of the 

 former. * * * From the verdict of experience, therefore, it is doubt- 

 ful whether the advantage to be obtained by any attempt to apply deci- 

 mal arithmetic to weights and measures, would ever compensate for the 

 increase of diversity which is the unavoidable consequence of change. 

 Nature has no partialities for the number ten ; and the attempt to shackle 

 her freedom with them will forever prove abortive." 



So in the interesting paper of Dr. Ellis (in the American Journul of 

 Pharmacy, Vol ii, page 202), the French decimal system is thus referred 

 to : "Everyone is struck, at the first glance of this system, with the 

 beautiful simplicity which it derives from decimal arithmetic. It appears, 

 however, to have been overlooked, that, afthough decimal arithmetic is 

 admirably designed to facilitate the calculation of mere number, it is not 

 equally well suited to the divisions of material things." 



Much to the same effect has been the result of the commission appointed 

 lately in England to consider the subject of a decimal coinage. The com- 

 missioners, after a full discussion and investigation of the subject, have very 

 recentlj^ reported against any change ; their report being drawn up in the 

 form of a series of twelve resolutions. The seventh resolution is as fol- 

 lows : "That as regards the comparative convenience of our present coin- 

 age, and of the pound and mill scheme, for the reckonings of the shop 

 and the market, and for mental calculations generally, the superiority 

 rests with the present system, in consequence, principally, of the more 

 convenient divisibility of 4, 12, and 20, as compared with 10, and the 

 facility for a successive division by 2 ; that is, for repeated halving, in cor- 

 respondence with the natural and necessary tendency to this mode of sub- 

 dividing all material things ; and with the prevalence of binary steps in 

 the division of our weights and measures." 



In the view, then, of this pervading law or principle of all human me- 

 trology, so well established, and so distinctly recognized, it becomes an 

 obvious necessity, in adopting a decimal scale, to engraft upon it, the 

 divisions of halves and quarters, at least (and in the case of the more 

 commonly employed units, of eighths), if we would adapt it to the de- 

 mands of the people, or if we would hope for its permanent establish- 

 ment. It is true that this would involve a considerable number of sub- 

 ordinate divisions between one denomination of measure and the next be- 

 low it, as it would be requisite to have separate and distinctive weights, 

 for instance, for the unit (whatever it might be) for one and a quarter of 



