NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 189 



with the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman measures, and, finally, with those 

 which are in use amongst us at the present day. This portion of his inquiry 

 is so curious and interesting as to deserve extraction : 



" But no nation, ancient or modern, is so remarkable for having preserved 

 a close agreement with the pyramid coffer as our own. First, our peck of 

 wheat, like the hecteus and modius, is contained 128 times in that coffer; 

 secondly, thirty-two of our bushels of wheat, or four of our quarters of 

 wheat, would fill a vessel of that same capacity if we had one still in use; 

 but, thirdly, though a vessel of this capacity is not in existence with us at 

 present, we must have had such a measure in earlier times, since we make 

 daily reference to it : for, when we say eight bushels of wheat are a quarter, 

 we affirm it to be a fourth part of some entire measure, which is exactly 

 equal in capacity to the pyramid coffer. 



"This measure was our chaldron, in Latin caldarium, a hot bath; and 

 though our measure was never used as a bath, we cannot wonder that such 

 a name was given to the vessel, if it resembled, as it probably did, the pyra- 

 mid coffer, for that is made exactly in the form of a hot bath. But no other 

 nation, as far as we can ascertain, has ever made use of such a measure of 

 capacity besides the English, and given it a name so exactly corresponding 

 with that which would be a true description of the pyramid coffer. The 

 laver of the Scriptures represents the same vessel in size and shape, but it 

 was not used as a measure of capacity. The Roman labrum, which is the 

 same word as laver, was applied to a bath in which a person ma}' recline or 

 bathe; as also to a wine-vnt, but not to a measure of capacity; and, proba- 

 bly, in no other country than our own is the word chaldron, which means a 

 hot bath (as the word caldron means an iron or copper vessel containing hot 

 water), retained as the proper term for a measure of capacity, precisely 

 equal to that of the pyramid coffer. By these several minute and singular 

 coincidences, the English nation appears to be more closely identified with 

 the people who founded the Great Pyramid than many of those nations of 

 antiquity who were apparently brought into closer contact with Egypt in the 

 earliest ages." 



He also traces to the coffer the distinction between Troy and Avoirdupois 

 weight: 



"As the pyramid coffer contains 18,005,760 Troy grains, or 18,000,000 grains 

 (omitting 5760 grains, equal to one pound), so it contains 3125 pounds Troy 

 of 5760 grains. But this is the weight of water. If the coffer were filled 

 with wheat the weight would be only 2500 pounds, or one-fifth less. Accord- 

 ingly, 10 pounds Troy of water would occupy the space of 8 pounds Troy 

 of wheat. The coffer was probably intended for a corn measure in the first 

 instance; but it was also found that the same vessel, which would hold 2500 

 pounds of wheat, would hold 312") pounds of water or wine. Hence any 

 vessel of capacity which would hold 10 pounds of 5760 grains was consid- 

 ered to hold 8 pounds of 7200 grains. This was the original, in all proba- 

 bility, of our Avoirdupois pound. 



'The name of Avoirdupois does not appear to have been given to any 

 kind of weight in England earlier than the ninth year of Edward the Third. 

 It is again mentioned in the twenty-fourth year of Henry the Eighth, when 

 a statute directs ' that beef, pork, mutton, and veal shall be sold by weight, 

 called Averdupois ; ' whence we may infer that butchers' meat had previ- 

 ously been sold by Troy weight. If there was an older weight which ex- 

 pressed the relation that water was supposed to bear to wheat, when both 



