on JVeiohts and Measures. 178 



1 "90 ; but they do not appear to have made any progre-s^ as 

 vonr committee have been unable to find any minutes of their 

 procfedings. 



Two acts were passed in tlie years 1"95 and 1797, the 35 

 Geo. III. cap. 102, and 37 Geo. III. cap, 143, which empower 

 justices of the peace to search for and destroy false weights, and 

 to punish the persons in vvliose possession they are found ; but 

 no mention is made in these acts of deficient measures. 



Your committee nnvv proceed to state what appear to them 

 to be the principal causes which have prevented the establish- 

 ment of uniform weights and measures ; and to state the reasons 

 which have induced tliem to differ from the committee of 1758 

 in some of their resolutions. 



It appears to your committee, that the great causes of the in- 

 accuracies which have prevailed, are the ^vant of a fixed standard 

 in nature with which the standards of measure might at all 

 times be easily comimred, the want of a simple nrode of con- 

 necting the measures of length with those of capacity and 

 weight, and also the want of proper tables of equalization, by 

 means of which the old measures might have readily been con- 

 verted into the new standards. Some' rude attempts seem to 

 have been made to establish a mode of connecting the measures 

 of capacity with weight. In an act of the 5 1st of Henry Third, 

 intituled, " Assisa Panis et Cervisiae," it is declared " that an 

 English penny called the Sterling, round without clipping, should 

 weigh 32 grains of wheat, well dried, and gathered out of the 

 middle of the ear ; and 20 pence to make art ounce, 12 ounces 

 a pound, eight pounds a gallon of wine, and eight gallons of 

 wine a bushel of London." 



Nothing however can be more luicertain and inaccurate than 

 this method of determining the size of a gallon measure by 

 the weight of a certain number of grains of wheat, which must 

 vary according to the season and tl>e nature of the soil and cli- 

 mate where they are jjroduced. 



In order to obtain some information as to what were the best 

 means of cojnparing the standards of length, with some invaria- 

 ble natural standard, your committee proceeded to examine 

 Dr. W. Myde Wollaston, Secretary to the Royal Society, and 

 Professor Plavfair of Edinburgh, 



From the evidence of these gentlemen, it appears that the 

 length of a pendulum making a certain number of vibrations in 

 a given portion of time, will always be the same in the same 

 latitude ; and that the standard English yard has been accurately 

 compared with the length of the pendulum which vibrates sixty 

 times in a minute in tlie latitude of London. 



The 



