Harding. — Certain Decimal and Metrical Fallacies. 89 



graphy have in Parliament ? What New Zealand Chamber 

 of Commerce has ever urged the necessity of rational spell- 

 ing? Yet this colony has as much right to lead in the one 

 direction as in the other, and the gain orthographic reform 

 would bring would be incalculable. In this respect, how- 

 ever, prejudice is so strong that the Education Department 

 insists on retaining corrupt forms that have largely died out 

 in common use. It clings tenaciously to the intrusive "u" 

 in " honour," "labour," and even in "neighbour." It was 

 not without surprise that I saw in the Weights and Measures 

 Bill of 1903 even such a concession to systematic spelling as 

 *' meter." By the way, it seems curious that this little colony 

 should strain the " silken thread " by endeavouring to initiate 

 a change that should begin at the centre of the nation's com- 

 merce. It can scarcely expect to force the hand of the 

 Empire in a matter like this. In fact, should our Parlia- 

 ment attempt to give effect to the proposal it would have 

 enough to do for many years to come in forcing its accept- 

 ance upon the people of the colony. 



We have been persistently told that the metric system is 

 scientific. It professes to be, but the claim is based on fallacy. 

 Not only is it found on examination to break down in this 

 respect at nearly every point, but on purely scientific grounds 

 as on practical it compares unfavourably with the national 

 standards. It was itself the outcome of a period of social and 

 scientific delirium, and its history to the present day is a 

 record of practical inadequacy and of bureaucratic coercion. 



Up to the last decade of the eighteenth century European 

 weights and measures, though exhibiting appreciable varia- 

 tion in standard and still encumbered with obsolescent tables 

 applying only to specific industries or localities, were prac- 

 tically uniform in principle. The standard of measure was 

 the foot, duodecimally divided. In England the inch was also 

 divided into twelve, and the twelfth-inch, known as the " line," 

 was used chiefly in scientific measurements. It is the unit 

 known to printers as " nonpareil," or in present nomenclature 

 "six-point." The third-inch, equal to four lines, was the 

 lowest unit popularly recognised, and was known as the 

 "barleycorn," as it was supposed to be fairly represented by 

 the length of a grain of barley from the centre of the ear. 

 Old table-books still in use in my childhood began, not as 

 might reasonably have been expected, " Twelve lines equal one 

 inch," but " Three barleycorns, one inch." Some idle jocosity 

 has been indulged in on the assumption that an actual barley- 

 corn was the ultimate basis of Saxon measurement, but this 

 is a fallacy. The popular name of every measure, without 

 exception, refers the standard to some supposed natural equi- 

 valent. In weight, for instance, we have the " grain." No 



