The Decimal System Of Notation

Ten ia, theoretioally, ill-suited for the radix of a system of notatiou, because it pernaits of only one bisection. The half of it is flve, an odd nvimber. It r.lao is incapable of any'other división. On ao(iount of these defects the system is ill adapted to the operations of the shop and the market. Altkotigh our calculations are universally made in the decimal system, none of our tables of weights and measures are decimal in any one of their subdivisions. In all departments of trade the eurrent prices have been derived from the process of Buccessivo halvings. The shopman reckons by halves, quarteís, eighths, sixteenths and thirty-seconds, and not by flfths or tenths. The yardstick is divided, in its practical use, into halves, quarters, eighths, etc, by successive biseotions. Even the sixteenth of a uuit ia more eornmonly nsed iu trade than tibe tenth. In tïio stock exchange, shares change in prioe by eighths of a dollar, and not by tenths. Even with our decimal system of money, we requirë coius for half 'and quarter of a dollar for practical use in trading. Almost the entire priee-list of our stores advances and recodes by these fractions of a unit formed by successive bisectioni'. The attenipt by the French to compel the use of the decimal system shows the difficnlty of such an undertaking. Popular necessities compelled the introduction of binal divisions. The prices of their money and stock markets are still frequently quoted in quarters and eighths. ' The attempt to divide time decimally was a failure. After trying to give to their decimal metrology a universal application, they have been compelled to modify it in many of their weights and measures. From tho inherent defects of a ten-scale, all attempts to introduce an international decimal system of weights and measurea have