Harding. —Certain Decimal and Metrical Fallacies. 107 



system kept Winchester quart bottles for storage, and in 

 preparing solutions thought and worked in the old standards. 

 Yet another worker in the same field, criticizing the nomen- 

 clature, said it was, according to all the laws of thought, a 

 defect. A separate characteristic name for each successive 

 unit gives it individuality, whereas the cumbrous and indis- 

 tinctive names in the metric system are found in practice to 

 be a source of error. 



As we have seen, the French scientists went to great pains 

 and expense to have some kind of cosmic basis for their sys- 

 tem. Our own system has not only the microcosmic basis 

 supplied by man himself, but according to the late Sir John 

 Herschel (who, by the way, did not take the Pyramid into 

 account at all) has relations to earth and water more striking 

 and harmonious than any the rival system can boast. Sir 

 John could speak on this subject, if any man could, with 

 authority. He was the ablest and most learned member of 

 the Standards Commission, and his letter to the Times, written 

 more than thirty years ago, is so much to the point that I 

 quote it in full : — 



As Mr. Ewart's Bill for the compulsory abolition of our whole sys- 

 tem of British weights and measures, and the introduction in its place of 

 the French metrical system, comes on for its second reading on the 13th 

 proximo, I cannot help thinking that a brief statement of the compara- 

 tive de facto claims of our British units and of the French on abstract 

 scientific grounds may, by its insertion in your pages, tend to disabuse the 

 minds of such, if any, of our legislators who may be under the impression 

 (1 believe, a very common one among all classes) that our system is devoid 

 of a natural or rational basis, and as such can advance no n priori claim 

 to maintain its ground. 



De facto, then, though not de j\ire (i.e., by no legal definition 

 existing in an Act of Parliament, but yet practically verified in our parlia- 

 mentary standards of length, weight, and capacity as they now exist), our 

 British units refer themselves as well and as naturally to the length of the 

 earth's polar axis as do the French actually existing standards to that of 

 a quadrant of the meridian passing through Paris, and even in itself better, 

 while the former basis is in itself a preferable one. 



To show this I shall assume as our British unit of length the Imperial 

 foot, of weight the Imperial ounce, and of capacity the Imperial half- 

 pint, and shall proceed to state how they stand related to certain proto- 

 types, which I shall call the geometrical ounce, foot, and half-pint ; and 

 shall then institute a similar comparison between the French legally 

 authenticated metre, gramme, and litre in common use with their (equally 

 ideal, because nowhere really existing) prototypes, supposed to be derived 

 from the Paris meridian quadrant, distinguishing the former as the prac- 

 tical, the latter as the theoretical, French units. 



Conceive the length of the earth's axis as divided into five hundred 

 million equal parts or geometrical inches. Then we will define : — 



(1.) A geometrical foot as twelve such geometrical inches ; 



(2.) A geometrical half-pint as the exact hundredth part of a geo- 

 metrical cubic foot ; and 



(3.) A geometrical ounce as the weight of one exact thousandth part 

 of a geometrical cubic foot of distilled water, the weighing 

 being performed, as our Imperial system prescribes, in air of 

 62° Fahr. under a barometric pressure of 30 inches. 



