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f the system here considered appeared in the Cornhill Magazine under the heading ' A San Carlo Superstition,' and was in that place described as 'a pretty little martingale' recently submitted to me by a correspondent of Knowledge.
amounts to 21.: A enters this sum in the third column (see fig. 2) as a loss, and also in the second under the cross-line. He then stakes the sum of this number, 2, which is now the lowest in column M, and 3, the upper-most--that is, he stakes 5l. If he loses, he enters the lost 5/. in columns M and L; and next stakes 8l., the sum of the top and- bottom figures (3l. and 5l.) in column M. He goes on thus till he wins, when he enters under the head w the amount he has won, and scores out in column M the top and bottom figures--viz., the 3l. (at. the top), and the last loss (at the bottom). This process is to be continued, the last stake, if it be lost, being always scored at the bottom of column M, as well as in the loss column, the last win being always followed by the scoring out of the top and bottom remaining numbers in column M. When this process has continued until all the numbers in column M are scored out, A will be found to have won 10l.; and whatever the sum he had set himself to win in the first instance, so long as it lies well within the tolerably wide limits allowed by the bank, A will always win just this sum in each operation.
Let us take a few illustrative cases, for in these matters an abstract description can never be so clear as the account of some actual case.
Consider, then, the accompanying account by A of" one of these little operations. The amount which A sets out to win is, as before, 10/. He divides this up into three parts--3/., 3l., and 41. He starts with a loss of' 2/., which he sets in columns M and L. He stakes next 5l. and loses, setting down 5/. in columns M and L. He
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