Note 14 — Chapter II

As a proper punishment for the introduction of so troublesome a novelty as these decimal scales, either the draftsman or lithographer has separated by a dot all the first figures of the decimals in the plate of the restored order (Plate xxii.). A dimension, therefore, which reads 2·96 or two feet eleven inches and a fraction in plate xxi., reads 2 ft. 9·6, or two feet nine inches and a fraction, in plate xxii. The lower diameter, which scales three feet six inches and one-third, reads three feet five inches and one-third, and so on. In fact, nine-tenths of the dimensions are absolutely wrong. The remaining tenth are right by accident; but most of these are so, simply because the lithographer has been too lazy or too inaccurate to put any sign by which they can be read. All this not only increases tenfold the labour of consulting the plates, but renders it doubtful whether frequently it is not a mere fighting with shadows to contest any theory on such documents.