Note: the results of this constructor can be somewhat unpredictable. One might assume that new BigDecimal(.1) is exactly equal to .1, but it is actually equal to .1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625. This is so because .1 cannot be represented exactly as a double (or, for that matter, as a binary fraction of any finite length). Thus, the long value that is being passed in to the constructor is not exactly equal to .1, appearances nonwithstanding.
The (String) constructor, on the other hand, is perfectly predictable: new BigDecimal(".1") is exactly equal to .1, as one would expect. Therefore, it is generally recommended that the (String) constructor be used in preference to this one.