MKTKU SNSTKM ol' WKKillTS AND MEASUKKS. 3I7 



and articles be priced iii^niil.s. tluis "cheap at is. ii;id." would 

 be •' cheap at 99," and " bargain at 5>/4d." would be " bargain at 

 24," as mils would be habitually omitted, as is the custom in the 

 I'nited States with cent values; articles over £\, such as. say, 

 £\ Js. (id., would be written 1.125. Without some practice the 

 ]irice of three articles at is. ii^d. and of two at sH^^- ^^^1 hardly 

 l)e done mentally, but in the mil coinage it is quite simple, namely, 

 350 less 5 = 345 mils --= 3 florins i quarter and 2 tickeys. In 

 the present coinage it wmiUl be 6s. lO^Xl^l. = 3 florins, i sixpence, 

 one ticke\-. one penn\ . and half]ienny, and a packet of pins. 



Calculations in interest and discount become simple. In all 

 considerable interest and especially in compound interest sums, it 

 is necessary to convert our present coinage into decimals, work 

 the sum, and reconvert into £ s. d. This circmnlocution will be 

 avoided when a decimal system is adopted. 



The general adoption of decimal systems will greatl}- sim- 

 plify the teaching of children and liberate time for other and 

 more ])rofltable study, business operations will be facilitated, and 

 account books more simply ruled. 



1 believe the difficulties of the transition stage tend to be 

 exaggerated. Those who have travelled abroad will have per- 

 sonal ex])erience of how short a time it takes to get accustomed 

 to strange money. 



June, 1916. 



Use of Meteorites by Primitive Man.(i. F. 

 Zimmer recently contributed to the Transacfioiis of the Iroii and 

 Steel Institute a jiajier containing a table, which included ])rac- 

 tically all known falls of meteoritic iron, showing in each case 

 the i;riginal weight of the meteorite, and whether it was or was 

 not sufficiently malleable to be wrought into objects of utility. 

 The table was compiled with the object of removing the opinion 

 ])revalent amongst archaeologists that such iron conld not have 

 i)een used by primitive man because of its supposed non- 

 malleability. A shorter article by the same writer appears in 

 Nature of January 4, 1917 (98, 350-352), in which illustrations 

 are given to show the fragmentary form of some meteorites and 

 the comparative ease with which small fragments could be de- 

 tached from such meteoritic masses. Amongst the meteorites 

 illustrated is one of 92 lb. weight from Kokstad, and another of 

 141 lb. from the Hex River Mountains. The weight of meteoritic 

 iron known at the present day is about 250 tons, of which total 

 the verv considerable amount of over 99 per cent, is malleable. 

 As all this meteoritic iron has been accumulated practically 

 within the last century, the writer argues that the alleged scarcitv 

 of meteoritic iron could not have been an obstacle to its use bv 

 primitive man. 



