50 



The Country Gentleman s Magadnc 



hence, in some parts, the pound of butter 

 means 17 oz., in others 18 oz., 20 oz., 21 oz. 

 22 oz., or 24 oz., and the stone may be the 

 legal 14 lb. of 16 oz. to the lb., or 16 lb., each 

 lb. consisting of 20 oz. But as if all this com- 

 plication was not enough, we find that in 

 some places, as at EUesmere in Salop, butter 

 is sold by the "dish," and in some other 

 places by the " yard" ! Cheshire farmers are 

 obliged to sell cheese by the cwt. of 121 lb., 

 while in London the person who buys from 

 the Cheshire dairyman sells it at the legal 

 1 1 2 lb. to the cwt. In Scotland, also, the legal 

 141b. does not represent what is known as the 

 stone of cheese, nor does the number of 

 pounds which constitute a stone of cheese 

 in one part of the country coincide with 

 what is required to make a stone in another. 



A "tod" of wool may be either 28 lb., 

 28X lb., 29 lb., or 32 lb., and a stone of wool 

 ranges from 4 lb. to 28 lb. The weight and 

 value of fat stock is quoted according to the 

 London stone, the imperial stone, or the Dutch 

 stone, according to local usage ; but we should 

 weary our readers were we to give all the de- 

 tails of the absurdly diversified weights and 

 measures in daily use where the sale of agri- 

 cultural produce is concerned. 



Surely it is high time that such an unsatis- 

 factory state of matters should be amended. 

 A unifomi standard should be adopted and 

 made compulsory, so that there may be no 

 difficulty in arriving at the marketable value 

 of agricultural commodities throughout the 

 length and breadth of the land. There is little 

 doubt that, ultimately, the metric or decimal 

 system will be the rule, but it must be 

 introduced gradually so as to accustom people 

 by degrees to the change, and this is in fact 

 being done at present. At Liverpool the 

 cental, or 100 lb., has been for some time 

 adopted as the standard weight, according to 

 which grain is sold \ and our 2s. pieces, or 

 florins, is another step towards the ultimate 

 introduction of a decimal system. In the 

 meantime we consider that the substitution 



of the legal lb., stone, cwt., and ton, in the 

 sale of grain and other kinds of agricultural 

 produce, instead of the present endless and 

 unintelligible diversity, would tend to simplify 

 matters very much, and the improvement 

 Avould be even more decided were it settled 

 that the cwt. should be 100 lb., the stone lolb., 

 and the lb. i o ozs. In the United States a cwt. is 

 exactly what it is supposed to mean— namely, 

 100 lb., and the ton, as a matter of course, 

 2000 lb. It does not appear clear why a 

 liundredweight in Great Britain should be 112 

 lb., seeing that the term surely means 100 lb. ; 

 and we consider that the propriety of making 

 a change in this as well as in other matters 

 connected with the general question of 

 weights and measures deserves consideration. 

 A few years ago an Act was passed rendering 

 it illegal to sell grain or other agricultural 

 produce in Ireland except by imperial pound, 

 stone, hundredweight, and ton, and the mea- 

 sure, which sAvept away a vast number of 

 abuses in the shape of over-weights, " casts 

 of beam," &c.,.has been productive of much 

 advantage. It is true that the corn 

 merchants in Dublin, after obeying the 

 Act for a week or two, appeared to find 

 the calculation between "barrels" and cwts. 

 too intricate for the extent of their arith- 

 metical acquirements, and consequently set 

 aside the Act, returning to their former sys- 

 tem of selling and buying by the " barrel," the 

 weight of which varies, according as the term 

 is applied to wheat, or barley, or oats. But 

 their resumption of an illegal mode of 

 conducting business is no reason why a 

 uniform system of selling grain by weight, 

 and all other articles by the imperial stan- 

 dard should not be universally adopted 

 and enforced. We trust that the question 

 will be taken up by Chambers of Agriculture 

 in all parts of Great Britain, and such repre- 

 sentation made to Parliament as will lead to 

 the abolition of the existing unseemly con- 

 fusion and anomalies in agricultural weights 

 and measures. 



