of our
early English mathematicians will also be found in the _Companion to
the Almanac_ for 1837, and in the _Magazine of Popular Science_, Nos.
18. 20. and 22.]

_"Les Lettres Juives."_--Will any of your correspondents inform me who is
the author of _Lettres Juives_? The first volume of my edition, in eight
volumes 12mo., has the portrait of Jean Batiste B., Marquis de ----, ne le
29 Juin, 1704.

J. R.

Sunderland.

["Par le Marquis D'Argens," says Barbier.]

* * * * *

Replies.

ATTAINMENT OF MAJORITY.

(Vol. viii., pp. 198. 250.)

In replying to Professor DE MORGAN'S last communication on this subject, it
may be as well, in order to avoid future misunderstanding, to revert
briefly to my original question. I pointed out Ben Jonson's assertion,
through a character in one of his plays, that about the beginning of the
seventeenth century, it was the custom to regard the legal rights of
majority as commencing with six o'clock A.M., and I asked to have that
assertion reconciled with our present commencement at midnight, and with
the statement that the latter is in accordance with the old reckoning.

Thus I started with the production of affirmative evidence, to rebut which
I cannot find, in the replies of PROFESSOR DE MORGAN, any negative evidence
stronger than his individual opinion, which, however eminent in other
respects, has undoubtedly the disadvantage of being two hundred years later
than the contemporary evidence produced by me. I afterwards cited Arthur
Hopton as authority that lawyers in England, in his time, did make use of a
day which he classifies as that of the Babylonians; but inasmuch as he
apparently restricts its duration to twelve hours, whereas all ancient
writers concur in assigning to the Babylonians a day of twenty-four hours,
there is evidently a mistake somewhere, attributable either to Hopton or
his printers.

This mistake may have arisen either from a misprint, or from a
transposition of a portion of the sentence.

The supposition of a misprint is favoured by the circumstance that Hopton
was, at the time, professing to describe natural days of _twenty-four_
hours; of these there are four great classes of commencement, from the four
principal quarters of the day; viz. from midnight, from mid-day, from
sun-setting and from sun-rising. Hopton had already assigned three of them
to different nations, and the fourth he had properly assig