ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. XI 



be of the utmost importance to reciprocal trade and the more enlarged 

 interchange of commerce. The Permanent International Committee 

 now comprises influential and intelligent members from Portugal, 

 Mexico, England, the United States, Austria, and France. Sweden, 

 Belgium, and other countries are also working in the common cause. 

 The press of every nation has been requested to consider first, the 

 question of unity in the denomination of moneys ; secondly, unity of 

 standard ; and, thirdly, unity of weights and measures of all kinds, 

 whether economical or scientific. 



No two countries have the same weights and measures, though the 

 same name to designate them may be used in many countries. Take 

 the mile measure, for instance. In England and the United States, 

 a mile means 1,760 yards; in the Netherlands it is 1,093 yards; while 

 in Germany it is 10,120 yards, or nearly six English miles; in France 

 it is 3,025 yards. The Scotch mile is 1,984, and the Irish 2,038 

 yards; the Spanish is 2,472 yards, and the Swedish mile 11,700 yards. 

 These are computed in English yards ; but the yard itself, of three feet 

 in length, has divers significations in different places. The English 

 yard is 36 inches ; the French, 39*13 inches ; the Geneva yard, 57*60; 

 the Austrian, 37*35; the Spanish yard, 33*04; the Prussian, 36*57; 

 the Kussian, 39 -51. For measures of capacity, the dissimilarity is 

 wider and more perplexing. 



There is no necessity, however, for introducing the French metrical 

 system into Great Britain and the United States, as with much less 

 trouble and confusion a decimal system can be introduced on the esta- 

 blished units. Thus the pound and the foot may be decimally divided 

 without introducing the kilogramme or the metre, or, what would be 

 the very sure form of the operation, a " usuel" pound and foot, being 

 respectively half a kilogramme and one-third of a metre, and thereby 

 defeating the benefits of a decimal system of calculation. It is not a 

 little remarkable that with a decimal currency system acknowledged 

 to be practically the best in operation the people and the government 

 of the United States have been content so long to continue the use of 

 the antiquated scale of weights and measures with which trade has 

 been embarrassed in England and its dependencies the pound as the 

 unit of weight, with its heterogeneous multiples and divisions, of ounce, 

 pennyweight, and grain, of stone, quarter, hundredweight, and ton; 

 moreover, occasionally duplicates of these, as the pound troy, and the 

 pound avoirdupoise the stone of 14, and the stone of 8 pounds, &c. 

 Nor has the lineal unit better recommendation. Its division into feet 

 and inches, and its multiples, those of pole, furlong, and mile, are of an 

 antiquity that renders them always cumbrous and incongruous, and, in 

 the main, practically unsuited to the age. 



There appears to be no reason why a decimal system should not 



