[_Aug. 14, 1866._ The Committee was appointed in the spring of 1830: it consisted of forty members. Death, of course, has been busy; there are now left Lord Shaftesbury,[307] Mr. Babbage,[308] Sir John Herschel,[309] Sir Thomas Maclear[310] (Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope), Dr. Robinson[311] (of Armagh), Sir James South,[312] Lord Wrottesley,[313] and myself].
Project of a new system of arithmetic, weight, measure, and coins, proposed to be called the tonal system, with sixteen to the base. By J. W. Mystrom.[314] Philadelphia, 1862, 8vo.
That is to say, sixteen is to take the place of ten, and to be written 10. The whole language is to be changed; every man of us is to be sixteen-stringed Jack and every woman sixteen-stringed Jill. Our old _one_, _two_, _three_, up to sixteen, are to be (_Noll_ going for nothing, which will please those who dislike the memory of _Old Noll_) replaced by An, De, Ti, Go, Su, By, Ra, Me, Ni, Ko, Hu, Vy, La, Po, Fy, Ton; and then Ton-an, Ton-de, etc. for 17, 18, etc. The number which in the system has the symbol
(using our present compounds instead of new types) is to be pronounced
Detam-memill-lasan-suton-hubong-ramill-posanfy.
The year is to have sixteen months, and here they are:
Anuary, Debrian, Timander, Gostus, Suvenary, Bylian, Ratamber, Mesudius, Nictoary, Kolumbian, Husamber, Vyctorius, Lamboary, Polian, Fylander, Tonborius.
Surely An-month, De-month, etc. would do as well. Probably the wants of poetry were considered. But what are we to do with our old poets? For example--
"It was a night of lovely June, High rose in cloudless blue the moon."
"It was a night of lovely Nictoary, High rose in cloudless blue the (what, in the name of all that is absurd?)."
And again, _Fylander_ thrown into our December! What is { 183} to become of those lines of Praed, which I remember coming out when I was at Cambridge,--
"Oh! now's the time of all the year for flowers and fun, the Maydays; To trim your whiskers, curl your hair, and sinivate the ladies."
If I were asked which I preferred, this system or that of Baron Ferrari[315] already mentioned, proceeding by _twelves_, I should reply, with Candide, when he had the option given of running the gauntlet or being shot: Les volontés sont libres, et je ne veux ni l'un ni l'autre.[316] We can imagine a speculator providing such a system for Utopia as it would be in the mind of a Laputan: but to explain how an engineer who has surveyed mankind from Philadelphia to Rostof on the Don should for a moment entertain the idea of such a system being actually adopted, would beat a jury of solar-system-makers, though they were shut up from the beginning of Anuary to the end of Tonborius. When I see such a scheme as this imagined to be practicable, I admire the wisdom of Providence in providing the quadrature of the circle, etc., to open a harmless sphere of action to the possessors of the kind of ingenuity which it displays. Those who cultivate mathematics have a right to speak strongly on such efforts of arithmetic as this: for, to my knowledge, persons who have no knowledge are frequently disposed to imagine that their makers are true brothers of the craft, a little more intelligible than the rest.