1887.] ^^1 [Taylor. 



would root up all our established forms and habits of calculation — which 

 would destroy the accumulated products of centuries of industrious 

 thought and toil — which would entail upon us generations of new labor 

 to attain even the same standard of tabular detail, and statistical informa- 

 tion, now possessed ; and which, more than all, would wholly demolish, 

 and perhaps hopelesslj% that uniformity so essential to the language of sci- 

 entific investigation, and so universally conceded to be one of the most 

 important aims and results of every project of metrical or numerical im- 

 provement. 



Upon this basis must the question of so radical a revolution rest. But 

 if it is shown that uniformity in many other relations than those of simple 

 number, and no less vital to the interests and welfare of the race than this 

 boasted uniformity of figures, has constantly and irretrievably been sacri- 

 ficed to this great idol — if it is established by the voice of all experience 

 that neither national nor international standards of length, of weight, of 

 area, of volume, or of value, of any single subject, in short, to which 

 these figures cau be usefully applied, have ever the slightest hope of ob- 

 taining a general authority under the dynasty of this "universal" power 

 — then must it be dethroned, for very uniformity's sake, and a new dis- 

 pensation introduced, developed from such principles, and invested with 

 such attributes, that it may rationally be expected to gain at length a uni- 

 versal ascendancy, through the concurrent approval and adherence of all 

 intelligent nations. For the attainment of a real uniformilj^, there seems 

 no other process or alternative ; and for such an attainment, no sacrifice 

 of temporary convenience could be held to be too great. The faults of 

 the denary system are too radical to be amended — too obnoxious to be en- 

 dured. Sheltered by the inertia and conservatism of inveterate habit, it 

 has been tolerated already much too long. The unskillful contrivance of 

 an early age, it is all unsuited to the wants or uses of an adult manhood 

 of the race. 



The Duodenary scale has over the denarj^ the advantage of allowing two 

 bisections, and, at tlie same time, like the senary scale, of admitting of a 

 trisection. Its variety of factors, 2, 3, 4, and 6, give it a much greater 

 power of expressing fractional values than any scale below it, or imme- 

 diately above it ; and it has accordingly been always found a conve- 

 nient and favorite number for metrical divisions. The acres, the feet, and 

 the pounds of the Romans were all divided by 12 ; as are the foot, and 

 the Troy pound, still with us. The signs of the Zodiac, the months of 

 the year, and the hours of the day, have illustrated the number from the 

 remotest antiquity. In the old French measures of length, not only the 

 foot was divided into 12 inches, but the inch into 12 lines, and the line 

 into 12 points. The "dozen,'' the "gross" or (12') and even tlie "great 

 gross" (or 12') are widely used in trade at the present day for the 

 package of a variety of articles. From the many acknowledged advan- 

 tages of the duodenary scale, it has found frequent and warm advo- 

 cates for its adoption as a system of numeration. In the necessity of 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXIV. 126. 2o. PRINTED DEC. 5, 1887. 



