236 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1917. 
Tuirp Merrrina. 
At the third meeting, held on Friday, July 6, the discussion on Mr. Sheppard’s 
paper ‘ Money-Scales and Weights’ was continued. 
Mr. WHITAKER said: Our decimal friends go a little too far. They think 
cedmues a cure for everything. It depends on decimal notation, which is a 
ad one. 
Dr. Barner said: If you have read much foreign literature as well as 
English, you will find there is an extraordinary variety in expression of 
notation, and it is extremely difficult to say what is meant. For instance, 
we in this country are accustomed to write 33.25m. for metres or any other 
decimal measure or weight. Jf you go to the people who invented the system 
—the French—they put 33m.25; that is how they do it. There is a worse 
difficulty almost than that. Of course it would be perfectly intelligible to put 
m.33.25; that can’t mean anything but 334 metres. But here is a diversity 
which creates considerable difficulty. Where we wish to put a decimal point we 
often put a full stop. That is not the French way of doing it. For our 33.251 
the French write 33,251. To an Englishman that means 33 thousand and 251. 
I have found authors using both these forms on the same page. If we are going 
to use the metric system all over the world, let us see that we all write it in 
the same way. In this case the least ambiguous form undoubtedly is 33.251 
In simple numeration similar questions arise. For a number in the thousands 
a Frenchman writes 33251. If he wants to make it longer: 125103717. That 
is not nearly so clear as to put in the comma. When the ordinary person writes, 
it is a very difficult thing for the printer to tell whether he is to put the hair 
spaces in or not. It is also necessary to indicate the unit in each case. To say 
that a fish is 2.34 long is meaningless, yet there are British authors who do this 
with, presumably, the permission of their British editors. 
Mr. A. L. Lewis said : With regard to measures, I have found in some of 
our stone circles which go back to Neolithic times the Mediterranean measures. 
At Stonehenge there is an old Mediterranean foot, which is somewhat less than 
our own foot. At Stanton Drew, Somerset, there is the same. In addition to 
that, at Stanton Drew you have a series of measurements working out with 
that of the Mediterranean foot. In other stone circles, in other parts of the 
country, I have found measurements not working out to that foot, but to other 
old Mediterranean measures. This was in prehistoric times. No doubt it was 
so from influences from the Mediterranean which I take to have been rather 
personal than tribal. That is, the measurements were brought over here by 
individuals coming casually—it might be as traders or explorers; it might be 
as fugitives from justice, or injustice, or even missioners. There was no doubt 
a great deal of travelling about in Neolithic times—much more than we think. 
The Presrpent said: There is one point with regard to the expressing of 
decimals to which I should like to refer: that of adopting a uniform method. 
There is only one way of doing it—that of using the full stop and putting it 
above the line. Everyone would know that this indicates decimals. 
Mr. SHEPPARD, in reply, said: With regard to Mr. Gordon’s suggestion that 
he would have liked to have heard a little more about the metric system, may I 
say that the entire object of the paper has been to demonstrate the necessity 
for the metric system? I felt that it was unnecessary to point out the advan- 
tages of such a system to this audience, and the recitation of the difficulties 
that have existed in the past, owing to the absence of the metric system, is 
surely the best evidence in favour of a change. One speaker asked when 
copper coins were introduced. Well, of course, there was the Harrington 
farthing in the reign of Charles II., but the great circulation of copper coins 
was in the reigns of the Georges. In the early days we only had the silver 
penny, which had to be kept up. The introduction of milled edges prevented a 
good deal of the coin clipping, and as soon_as we got the milled edge, which 
could not be interfered with, the necessity for weighing coin was largely done 
away with. In Elizabeth’s time nearly everybody who could get hold of any 
money cut a nice respectable portion from the edge. 
The PresrpEnt said : We could scarcely have a subject more important for 
