Art. III. Suggestions for a plan combining the advantages of 

 the decimal and dual systems of subdivision of weights and 

 measures. 



"Man is the measure of all things." — Protagoras. 



Like most moral aphorisms, which, although always 

 containing a large portion of truth, are yet perhaps never 

 universally applicable and absolutely true, the simple apo- 

 thegm here quoted from the celebrated sophistic philoso- 

 pher, uttered by him with a speculative intent of great 

 depth of meaning, was also susceptible of a trite and very 

 obvious interpretation ; for, in measuring as in counting, his- 

 torical and traditionary accounts of the infancy of nations 

 and tribes generally agree in tracing the elements of both 

 these arts to the members of the human body that are most 

 incontinently brought into active use : the hands and the 

 fingers. The ten fingers of man's two hands doubtless 

 founded the denary scale in arithmetic, which has come to 

 prevail with all people of the earth ; and it was amongst 

 the Egyptians, the most ancient people with whom we have 

 any reliable historical and monumental relations, that we 

 find recorded the first attempt to establish a standard mea- 

 sure of length, which was sought in the average breadth of 

 a finger of a middle-sized man. This finger's-breadth sub- 

 sequently appeared as the greek daktylos and the roman 

 digitus ; but it was soon superseded with the latter people 

 by the uncia (from which is derived the modern english 

 name inch) or finger nail, and the pollex (whence the french 

 term pouce) or thumb's-breadth. 



The egyptian priests (as they are now commonly called, 

 but who were properly their learned men), improved the 

 accuracy of the standard digit by a method something like 



