THE VIGESIMAL AND DECIMAL SCALES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Surely the co-existence of the vigesimal and decimal scales can be explained by reference to the circumstances in which they originated. In pastoral and agricultural com- munities, used to bare feet or sandals, the ten fingers and ten toes provided the twenty digits which form Nature's abacus. In other spheres of activity, where shoes or other coverings obscured the feet, the scale of ten was found to fulfil all requirements, especially where large aggregates were con- cerned. Some of your correspondents have been speculating on the virtues of such numbers as twenty-two or eleven. This, I think, opens up a subject totally unconnected with the score as a numerical landmark. To arrive at an effective ten, twenty, hundred, and so on in dealing with fluctuating quantities it is necessary to add a percentage for contin- gencies, varying with the nature of the subject-matter enumerated. Thus a guinea represents twenty shillings plus 5 per cent, for incidental expense; a cricket eleven, ten players plus 10 per cent. for possible illness or incapacity ; a " long hundred" of herrings or pilchards sold on the beach is a hundred fish plus 20 per cent. for wastage ; a crate of limes contains 220 fruits, or a 10 per cent. allowance, and so forth. But to go into all the peculiarities of weights and measures would fill a volume, and reference to commentaries on these would doubtless explain why 5} yards make a perch (four of which evolve our old friend twenty-two, or a chain). It may he as well to point out that a twenty-one-year lease is simply three periods of seven years, the product of those numbers symbolical of perfection in heaven and on earth respectively, and not twenty years plus 5 per cent.—I am, Sir, &c.,
D. M.
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