FOURTEENTH ORDINAEY MEETING. 



119 



this strange arrangement of time measurement. Indeed, it is only- 

 after 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 still further, and make the general 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 



