May 23, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



829 



tube. The commoner, non-liquefying form 

 appears to have been found by Laws and 

 Andrewes in the sewage of St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital in 1894 (Keport to the London 

 County Council on the 'Micro-organisms of 

 Sewage'). Still earlier Roscoe and Lunt 

 ('Contributions to the Chemical Bacteriology 

 of Sewage,' Phil. Trans. Boy. Soc. London, 

 CLXXXIL, 1891, not CLXXXIIL, 1892, as 

 given by Chester) described under the name 

 Streptococcus mirabilis a form which de- 

 veloped best without air, gave faint growths 

 on gelatin and agar, and formed a cottony 

 mass at the bottom of the broth tube. These 

 organisms are all closely related to each other, 

 as well as to the Streptococcus pyogenes of 

 Rosenbaeh ; and until more detailed systematic 

 study of the group is made, the common sewage 

 forms may perhaps best be known provisionally 

 as the 'sewage streptococci of Houston,' since 

 he iirst called attention to their sanitary sig- 

 nificance. We feel convinced that this group 

 may prove of the greatest assistance to bac- 

 teriologists in this country, as it has done 

 already in England, and that record of its 

 presence or absence should be made in any 

 sanitary bacteriological water analysis. 



C.-E. A. WiNSLOW. 



(Miss) M. P. Hunnewell. 

 Biological Laboratories, 

 Mass. lisrsTiTUTE of Techwology, 

 May 8, 1902. 



THE METRIC SYSTEM OP WEIGHTS AND 

 MEASURES.* 

 The Committee on Coinage, Weights, and 

 Measures, to whom was referred the bill to 

 adopt the weights and measures of the metric 

 system as the standard weights and measures 

 of the United States, having duly considered 

 the same, respectfully report as follows : 



* Report submitted by Mr. Southard, from the 

 Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, 

 to the House of Representatives on April 21. 

 The text of the bill recommended is as follows: 

 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Repre- 

 sentatives of the United States of America in 

 Congress assembled, That on and after the first 

 day of January, nineteen hundred and four, all 

 the departments of the Government of the United 



By Section VILE, of Article I. of the Con- 

 stitution power is vested in Congress to fix 

 the standard of weights and measures, and 

 yet, strange as it may appear, this is about 

 the only great and important subject in- 

 trusted to its care by the express provisions 

 of the Constitution which has been almost 

 wholly neglected. Again and again has the 

 necessity for a change in our system of 

 weights and measures been urged upon the at- 

 tention of Congress. Washington more than 

 once pointed out the importance of securing 

 a uniform system of weights and measures, 

 and early in the history of our country the 

 matter was referred to Jefferson, then Secre- 

 tary of State, who proposed two plans, one 

 an adaptation of the existing system and the 

 other a strictly decimal system. 



John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, 

 after four years of careful study, made a re- 

 port which is worthy of the attention of the 

 most advanced thinkers upon this subject at 

 the present day. He pointed out the failure 

 of the English people to reduce to any sensible 

 order the chaos of their weights and measures 

 and urged upon Congress the necessity for a 

 reform. He, however, advised delay until the 

 metric or international system, which was 

 then in its infancy, had been more fully tried, 

 and to which he referred in a most glowing 

 tribute as possessing all of the requisites of a 

 simple, uniform, and workable system of 

 weights and measures. 



Since that time the adoption of the metric 

 system has been repeatedly recommended by 

 the departments of the Government and Con- 

 gressional committees. The annual report of 

 the Secretary of the Treasury for the year 

 ending June 30, 1899, contains the following 

 clear and concise statement : 



States, in the transaction of all business requir- 

 ing the use of weight and measurement, except 

 in completing the survey of public lands, shall 

 employ and use only the weights and measures 

 of the metric system; and on and after the first 

 day of January, nineteen hundred and seven, the 

 weights and measures of the metric system shall 

 be the legal standard weights and measures of 

 and in the United States. 



