161

Ordinary Meeting, April 3rd, 1866.

, ·R. ANGUS SMITH, Ph.D., F.R.S., &c., President, in the Chair.

Messrs. Wm. Brockbank and G. C. Lowe were appointed

Auditors of the Treasurer's accounts.

Mr. BINNEY,F.R. S., said that he hadobser\'ed the humming

bird hawkmoth (Macroglossa Stellatarum) during the past
. summer in far greater abundance than he ever remembered
having seen it befOl"e. In the month of August, he saw
upwards of a· hundred of thel)} in a garden near Grimsby,
were they appeared to prefer the commOn lavender flower for
food to any other in the place. Again in the nnt week of
October, he observed upwards of twenty in a garden at
Douglas, in the Isle of Man. Here' they preferred to feed
. 011 heliotrope before other lIowers. It was very interesting
to watch these moths hovering over the flowers, and whilst
on the wing extracting their food. They appeared very
wary and shy after any attempt being made to capture them,
but if you merely observed without making any attempt to
molest them they would continue their feeding in confidence,
and you could watch them at your leisure. So' a great deal
of the shyness and cauti~n ~or which the little creature has
got the credit of, is proba.bly more due to: the persevering
efforts of its enetnies to capture it than any natural feal" of
man.

A paper was read "On a Logical Abacus," by W. S.

JXVGNS, Esq., M.A.. .
The author believed that this ~as th~ first attempt, or at
all events, the fir$t successful attempt, to reduce the pro-
cesses of logical inference to a mechanic~l form. The pl;ll·p.OS~
of this contrivance is to sho\v tbe simple trut.h, and the perfect
PaooUl>mGS-LIT# & l'mL. SocmU.-VOL. V.-No. 14-8_SIO. 1866-6.
 162

generality of a new system of pUl:e Qualitative J.Jogic closely

analagous to, and suggested by, the mathematical system of
logic of the late Professor Boole, but strongly distinguished
from the latter by the rejection of all considerations of
quantity.
This logical abacus leads naturally to the construction
of a simple machine which shall be capable of giving
with absolute certainty all possible logical conclusions from
any sets of propositions or prelnises read off upon the keys
of the instrument. The possibility of such a contrivance is
practically ascertained; when completed it will furnish a
more signal proof of the truth of the system of logic embodied
in it. Still the more rudimentary contrivance called the
abacus will remain the most convenient for explaining the '
nature and wOTking offormal inference, and may be usefully
employe4 in the lecture room, for exhibiting tl1e complete
analysis of arguments and logical conditions, and the expo-
sure of fallacies.
The abacus consists of-
1. An inclined black board, furnished with four ledges,
8ft. long, placed 9in. apart.
!. Series of fiat slips of wood, the smallest set fOUl" i 11
number, and other sets, 8, 16, and 32 in number, marked
with combinations of letters, as follows :-
FIRST SET.

A A a
B b - B b
SEOOND SET.

~ ~t 1 B ~~ I ~ ~
o C .0 Ceel.-.£. c
.T~e third and. fourth set6 exhibit, the corresponding com-
., .. '. ,.. " , ,0, , , '_ , , ,
blDa.:ti.o~of :t~ . letters ,A,' Be, D, ··a %. 0 'd and ABC
D, E, :Q, /J, C,fJ, lJ~<·'.. '
 163
The slips are furnished with little pins, so that when
placed upon the ledges of the board, those marked by any
given letter may be readily picked out by means of a
straight-edged ruler, and removed to another ledge.
The use of the abacus will be best shown by an example.
Take, thesyllogiem in Ba,.hara:-
Man is mortal.
Socrates is man.
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
Let
A == Socrates.
B = Man.
e = Mortal.
The corresponding small italic letters then indicate the
negatives.
a = not-Socrates,
b -= not-Man,
c = not.-Mortal,
and the premises may be stated as
A is B,
B is C.
N ow take the second set of slips containing all the possible
combinations of A., B, C, a, iJ, c, and ascertain whi~b of
the combinations are possible under the conditions of the
premises.
Select all the slips marked- A, and as all these ought to be
B's, select again those which are not B, or h, and reject them.
Unite the Temainder, and selecting the B's, reject those which
are not C or c. There will now remain only four slips or com-
binations:

A
B
C
a
B
C
a
b
C [[
If we rf:quire the description' of Socrates, or A, \ve take
the only combination containing A, and observe that it is
 164
joined with C, hence the Aristotelian conclusioll Socrates 'is
mortal. We may also get any othel' possible conclusion.
For instance the class of things not-Mall or b is seen from
the two last combinations to be always a or not-Socrates,
but either mOT·tal or not-mortal as the case may· be.
Precisely the same obvious system of analysis is applicable
to arguments ho,vever complicated. As an example take the
premises treated in Boole's Laws of. Thought, p. 1~5 .
( 1.) Similar figures consist of all whose corresponding
angles are equal, and whose corresponding sides are propor-
tional.
(2.) Triangles whose corresponding angles are equal have
their corresponding sides proportional, and 'Vice versa.
Let
A= similar.
B -= triangle.
C ::-: having corresponding angles equal.
D = having corresponding sides proportional.
The premises ma.y then be expressed in Qualitative
Logic,· as follows : -
A = CD.
Be = BD.
Take the set of 16 slips; out of the A's reject those which
are not CD; out of the· CD's reject those which are notA;
out of the B(~'s reject those which are not BD; and out
of the BD's reject t40se which ate not Be. There will
remain only six slips, as follows : -

A
B
C
A
o
b
a
B
c
tl
c
a
b
c
a
b
c
1> D d, d D d

From thes~ we may at once read off all the conclusions

laboriously d~duc~d by Boole in his obscure p~ocesses. . We
.•. 8ee -Pure . Logic, -or the Quality of Logic, a.pa.rt from Quantity, by
w. S~1 JeTo~1 H.A:., Loudon (St&nford), ISM.
 165
at once see, for instance, that the class a, or "dissimilar
figures, consist of all triangles (B) which have not their
corresponding angles equal (0) and sides proportional (el),
and of all figures not bemg triangles (b) which have either
their angles equal (C) and sides not proportional (d), or their
corresponding sides proportional (D) and angles not equal,
or neither their corresponding angles equaluor corresponding
sides proportional/' (Boole, p. 126.)
'rhe selections as made upon the abacu8 are of course
subject to· mistake, but only one easy step is rpquired to a
logical machine, in which the selections shall be made
mechanically and faultlessly by the mere reading down of
the prernises upon a set of keys, or handles, representing the
several positive and negative terms, the copula, conjunctions,
and stops of a proposition.
Mr. Jevons stated his opinion distinctly that these contri-
vatlces possessed a theoretical rather than a practical
importance. Like the analogous Calculating Machine of
Babbage or Schentz, the logical machine would hardly find
practical employment for the present at least. But its value
consistecl in showing the true nature of logic as a system of
analysis of tpe possible combinations of things, in short as
the highes.t and simplest form of the doctrine of combinations.
Not only would the .deductive, and especially the inductive
processes of logic be thus presented in a new and clearer light~
but the ·relation of logic, the qualita.tive doctrine of combina-
tions, to mathem.atics the quantitative doctrine of combinations,.
\yould be defined, and the abstract sciences thus brought into
harmony and due subordination.

In the description of his balance given in the last No. of

the Proceedings, Dr. JOULE omitted to mention a fixed
support against which the scale rests when the counterbalance
is ~removed. . By this means .the wires ·are kept constantly in
the ~am~· $ta~ .of tension, and are thus preserved. from the
derangement which;~ght otherwise en8ue~