With 8 as a base we should obtain by successive halvings, 4, 2, 1.

A similar process in our decimal scale gives 5, 2-1/2, 1-1/4.

All this is undeniably true, but, granting the argument up to this point, one is then tempted to ask "What of it ?" A certain degree of simplicity would thereby be introduced into the Theory of Numbers; but the only persons sufficiently interested in this branch of mathematics to appreciate the benefit thus obtained are already trained mathematicians, who are concerned rather with the pure science involved, than with reckoning on any special base.

A slightly increased simplicity would appear in the work of stockbrokers, and others who reckon extensively by quarters, eighths, and sixteenths.

But such men experience no difficulty whatever in performing their mental computations in the decimal system; and they acquire through constant practice such quickness and accuracy of calculation, that it is difficult to see how octonary reckoning would materially assist them.