nce S. Benson.

No. 16. Letter of T. C. Octman, of Hope Mills, N. C.,
calling attention to the fact that the meridian of Greenwich
passes through Havre.

No. 17. Letter from Dr. H. K. Whitner, explaining his
notation of 24 hours.

I am, sir, with great respect, your obedient servant,

C. R. P. RODGERS,
_President International Meridian Conference_.

Prof. J. C. ADAMS.

_Report of the Committee._

The Committee on communications respectfully reports as
follows:

We have carefully examined all of the communications
referred to us, as enumerated in the letter of President
Rodgers, with the following results:

No. 1 recommends that the meridian of Bethlehem be adopted
as the initial meridian. This question has been already
disposed of by the Conference; therefore further
consideration of the proposition is unnecessary.

No. 2 refers to an invention, the author of which states
that "a patent has been applied for," consequently your
Committee does not feel called upon to express any opinion
upon it.

No. 3 is a letter from M. de Chancourtois, accompanying a
work by him which contains an elaborate program of a system
of geography based on decimal measures, both of time and of
angles, and on the adoption of an international meridian.

The work also contains copious historical notices on the
metric system and on the initial meridian.

A copy of this work was presented to each of the Delegates
prior to the discussions of the Conference with regard to
the choice of an initial meridian, and therefore no special
report of the author's views on this subject appears to your
committee to be necessary. These views are nearly identical
with those which were so ably laid before the Conference by
Professor Janssen, but which failed to meet with their
approval.

The author further proposes to supersede the present mode of
measuring both angles and time by a system in which the
entire circumference and the length of the day should each
be first divided into four equal parts, and then each of
these parts should be subdivided decimally.

However deserving of consideration these proposals may be,
in the abstract, your Committee are clearly of the opinio