Dy: 
43 
B. A. Gould, J. L. Le Conte, and W. D. Whitney, together 
with the officers of the Academy, members ex officio. 
The next session of the Academy will be held at North- 
ampton, Mass., on the first Tuesday in August, 1866. 
Respectfully submitted. 
JOSEPH HENRY, 
Vice-President National Academy of Sciences. 
Hoy. Scuuyrer Corrax, Speaker of the House of Representatives. 
APPENDIX A. 
Report of the Committee on Weights, Measures, and Coinage 
to the National Academy of Sciences, January, 1866. 
The Committee are in favor of adopting, ultimately, a 
decimal system ; and, in their opinion, the metrical system 
of weights and measures, though not without defects, is, all 
things considered, the best in use. The Committee therefore 
gzest that the Academy recommend to Congress to 
authorize and encourage by law the introduction and use of 
the metrical system of weights and measures ; and that, with 
a view to familiarize the people with the system, the Acade- 
my recommend that provision be made by law for the im- 
Mediate manufacture and distribution to the custom-houses 
and States of metrical standards of weights and measures ; 
to introduce the system into the post-offices by making a 
Single letter weigh fifteen grammes instead of fourteen and 
Seventeen hundredths, or half an ounce; and to cause the 
new cent and two-cent pieces to be so coined that they shall 
Weigh, respectively, five and ten grammes, and that their 
diameters shall be made to bear a determinate and simple 
-_Yatio to the metrical unit of length. 
