520 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



or both styles together, placing the Old first (as 16/29 September or 

 18 September /I October), or only the New Style if they wish to be 

 very polite. Russian Poles, on the contrary, both Roman Catholic 

 and Protestant, use, in private life and in correspondence with friends 

 in Poland and abroad, exclusively the New Style. If they write to a 

 Russian acquaintance, they date the letter in the two styles together, 

 placing the New first (29/16 September). In official letters they have 

 to use the Old Style, except notaries and the Catholic and Protestant 

 clergy, who must use both styles together, as otherwise misunder- 

 standings would often arise in records of births, marriages and deaths. 

 In the 1st probable conclusion the estimated probability of 

 100/101 depends on the total number of letters passing under ordinary 

 circumstances from Warsaw in Russia to Berlin in Germany, as 

 opposed to the total number from the former city to the various places 

 elsewhere in the world, especially in America, which have adopted 

 the name of Berlin. The German capital has a great population con- 

 ducting in ordinary times an important commerce and correspondence 

 with the neighboring Polish centre, while the other communities with 

 the name of Berlin are mostly insignificant in population, the largest 

 with some twenty thousand, and they have little occasion for corre- 

 spondence with the remote country of Poland. In the 2nd conclusion, 

 the difference in calendars between the two countries not being in 

 evidence, the estimate of 1,000/1,001 represents the ordinary chances 

 that a letter is actually in transmission between the dates stamped by 

 the sending and receiving offices. Among the millions of letters sent 

 errors in stamping are rare, and the probability that the letter was 

 twenty- four days in transmission will be correspondingly great. In 

 the 3rd conclusion, according to the evidence then available (date of 

 letter, July 24; stamp of mailing office, July 26, Old Style; dift'erence 

 between styles, 13 days), the letter, if written on July 24, New Style 

 ( = July 11, Old Style), must have been kept 15 days before mailing; 

 while, if written on July 24, Old Style, the number of days it was kept 

 would be only two. The probability of 1,000/1,001 or 1,000:1 in 

 this conclusion is estimated therefore on the proportion of instances 

 in actual experience where letters are kept for two days before mailing, 

 as against those instances where they are kept for fifteen. In the 

 4th conclusion the attitude of Russian Poles toward the Russian 

 calendar is not in evidence. All that is known is that a correspondent 

 writing abroad departed from the calendar of his own country and 

 dated his letter according to the calendar of the recipient. On this 

 evidence the probability is very great that the action was due to 

 courtesy, but it is difficult to suggest a basis for a numerical estimate; 

 therefore, the degree of probability has been rated here, as in similar 

 conclusions in Case 3, simply as "high." 



