FOURTEENTH ORDINARY MEETING. 119 
this strange arrangement of time measurement. Indeed, it is only 
aftér years of patient labour and mental struggle, that the majority 
of children succeed in fixing in their minds the meaning of the 
minute hand when in different places. Let anyone take the clock 
constructed in the manner I have indicated, and I will venture to 
say that any child can learn to tell the time from it in a few short 
lessons. I might go stili further, and make the genera] statement 
that an enormous amount of mental labour is expended among 
ordinary people in looking at a clock or watch, and going through 
the struggle that is termed “ telling the time.” 
The clock which I have constructed from an ordinary eight day 
clock, and which fulfils accurately the above conditions, as regards 
the hours and minutes, is represented in the Figure. 
TIME 1°55. 
Mr. Keys, referring to the clock on the decimal system by 
which the paper was illustrated, showed the ease with which 
the change could be made, viz., by the use of two additional 
wheels, and congratulated the Institute on the reading of this 
paper so soon after Sandford Fleming’s, by which important 
changes were brought about. 
Mr. Livingstone doubted whether the change could be 
made, because the human mind is not mathematical, but 
rather musical, running in 2’s 3’s and 4’s. 
The President approved of the change because we are 
committed to the decimal system of numeration, but thought 
