cise Office, went to
101 decimal places. To test the accuracy of this, I requested Mr. Johnston
to undertake another equation, connected with the former one in a way which
I did not explain. His solution verified the former one, but he was unable
to see the connection, even when his result was obtained. My reader may be
as much at a loss: the two solutions are:

2.0945514815423265...
9.0544851845767340...

The results are published in the _Mathematician_, Vol. III, p. 290. In
1851, another pupil of mine, Mr. J. Power Hicks,[145] carried the result to
152 decimal places, without knowing what Mr. Johnston had done. The result
is in the _English Cyclopaedia_, article INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION.

I remark that when I write the initial of a Christian name, the most usual
name of that initial is understood. I never saw the name of W. G. Horner
written at length, until I applied to a relative of his, who told me that
he was, as I supposed, Wm. _George_, but that he was named after a relative
of that _surname_.

The square root of 2, to 110 decimal places, was given {68} me in 1852 by
my pupil, Mr. William Henry Colvill, now (1867) Civil Surgeon at Baghdad.
It was

1.4142135623730950488016887242096980785696
7187537694807317667973799073247846210703
885038753432764157273501384623

Mr. James Steel[146] of Birkenhead verified this by actual multiplication,
and produced

2 - 2580413 / 10^{117}

as the square.

Calcolo decidozzinale del Barone Silvio Ferrari. Turin, 1854, 4to.

This is a serious proposal to alter our numeral system and to count by
twelves. Thus 10 would be twelve, 11 thirteen, etc., two new symbols being
invented for ten and eleven. The names of numbers must of course be
changed. There are persons who think such changes practicable. I thought
this proposal absurd when I first saw it, and I think so still:[147] but
the one I shall presently describe beats it so completely in that point,
that I have not a smile left for this one.

ON COMETS.

The successful and therefore probably true theory of Comets. London,
1854. (4pp. duodecimo.)

The author is the late Mr. Peter Legh,[148] of Norbury Booths Hall,
Knutsford, who published for eight or ten {69} years the _Ombrological
Almanac_, a work of asserted discovery in meteorology. The theory of comets
is that the joint attraction of the new moon and several planets in the
direction of the sun, draws off the gases from the e