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
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 earth, and forms these cometic meteors. But how these meteors come to describe orbits round the sun, and to become capable of having their returns predicted, is not explained.
A NEW PHASE OF MORMONISM.
The Mormon, New York, Saturday, Oct. 27, 1855.
A newspaper headed by a grand picture of starred and striped banners, beehive, and eagle surmounting it. A scroll on each side: on the left, "Mormon creed. Mind your own business. Brigham Young;"[[149]] on the right, "Given by inspiration of God. Joseph Smith."[[150]] A leading article on the discoveries of Prof. Orson Pratt[[151]] says, "Mormonism has long taken the lead in religion: it will soon be in the van both in science and politics." At the beginning of the paper is Professor Pratt's "Law of Planetary Rotation." The cube roots of the densities of the planets are as the square roots of their periods of rotation. The squares of the cube roots of the masses divided by the squares of the diameters are as the periods of rotation. Arithmetical verification attempted, and the whole very modestly stated
and commented on. Dated G. S. L. City, Utah Ter., Aug. 1, 1855. If the creed, as above, be correctly given, no wonder the Mormonites are in such bad odor.
MATHEMATICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF DOCTRINE.