924 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XXI. No. 546. 



the education of the child easier, will make it 

 vastly more difficult, because it will then be 

 necessary to teach the old system, which will 

 persist in use, and also to teach in fact as well 

 as in name the metric system with the con- 

 fusing ratios, direct and reciprocal, between 

 the English and metric units. 



If any one wants proof of this he can find it 

 in the same French arithmetic. One chapter, 

 ' Nomenclature des anciennes mesures et com- 

 parison avec les nouvelles,' treats of old units, 

 a few of which are: toise, pouce, ligne, aune, 

 ■pas, lieue, perche, arpent, solive, corde, setter, 

 rnuid, mine, minot, livre, once, denier, grain. 



If he still doubts let him go to some great 

 French industry, textile manufacturing for 

 example, and there study the chaos of weights 

 and measures, thus described in 1902 by Paul 

 Lamoitier, a French manufacturer: 



We are as nuicli in the anarchy of weights and 

 measures for the textile industry as at the time 

 of the Revolution. * * 



The famous aune, do you know its equivalent? 

 Exactly 3 feet, 7 inches, 10 lines, and 10 points, 

 or in other words, 1.188447 meters; the foot being 

 equal to .324839 meter and divided into 12 inches, 

 the inch into 12 lines and the line into 12 points. 



You would not imagine this as you are in the 

 habit of calling it 1.19 meters. You laugh! It 

 is, however, no laughing matter, unless you con- 

 sider it as I do, profoundly ridiculous. * * * 



I will take my oath that the manufacturer of 

 Rouen if he has not studied each section sepa- 

 rately, has no idea what is the standard of Reims 

 or the denier of Lyons or Milan. And on the 

 other hand the manufacturers of Reims and Lj'ons 

 are likewise puzzled in making comparisons of the 

 diverse numberings of the diverse materials. 



Such is the condition of French weights and 

 measures at the present time. The evidence 

 here presented is from French sources and 

 makes ridiculous not only the claim of sav- 

 ing in education, but the whole metric proposi- 

 tion as well. This school children fallacy is 

 confined to English-speaking countries where 

 in the absence of experience with the metric 

 system the imagination supplies the founda- 

 tion for argument. The French labor under 

 no such delusion. 



Of course, if they insist, English-speaking 

 countries can learn about the metric system 



in the high priced school of their own experi- 

 ence, but more than a century of experience 

 in France can be had without money and 

 without price. Samuel S. Dale. 



BosTox, Mass., 

 ]\Iarch 27, 1905. 



will the metric system save time IX 

 EDUCATION' ? 



In the article entitled, ' The Metric Fallacy,' 

 Science, March 3, p. 353, is the statement that, 

 in the New York public schools : ' The time 

 allotted for all branches of mathematics 

 amounts to 34i weeks for the eight years.' 

 These figures relate to the actual time spent 

 in recitation, which extends through nearly 

 one year of school life, that is, about one 

 eighth of the entire time. A complete educa- 

 tion, to which Lord Kelvin referred in the 

 British Parliament, includes high school and 

 college, eight years more, which, with the same 

 division of time, gives two years of solid 

 mathematics. In England, one sixth, instead 

 of one eighth is given to mathematics, and it 

 is not extravagant to say that one half of this 

 is wasted because of our barbarous weights 

 and measures. Part of the economy of time 

 shown in this country is due to our decimal 

 money, part to the disuse here of many of the 

 old English measures still taught in the Eng- 

 lish schools, and part to the greater use here of 

 the metric system in our higher education, or 

 perhaps it would be more correct to say, the 

 non use therein of the English system. 



Wm. H. Seamax. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 



THE PELE obelisk OXCE MORE.* 



The recent massive-solid extrusion from 

 within the crater of Mont Pele has been de- 



* Descriptions of the ' dome ' and of ' spine ' or 

 ' obelisk ' of Mont Pele, with references to many 

 previous papers relating to the volcano, may be 

 found in: Hovey, E. 0., 'The New Cone of Mont 

 Fel6 and the Gorge of Rivi&re Blanche,' in Ameri- 

 can -Journal of Science, Vol. XVI., 1903, pp. 269- 

 281. Hovey, E. O., 'The 1902-1903 Eruptions of 

 Mont Pel6, Martinique, and the Soufrifere, St. 

 Vincent,' in Comptes Rendus IX. Congrcs gcol- 

 ogique international, de Vienne, 1903, pp. 707-738. 



