564 ANCIENT DESEMERfl OR STEELYARDS. 



spoiling- tho oscillations. Thus tho sonsihility niiirht easily have boon 

 made foui' times as great, only douhling the period of oscillation. 

 The Thibetan desemers show this. That of tig. 15, for example, has 

 a general resemblance to the (Jerman desemers. except for ha\ing a 

 pan. But the mode of suspensioi l>y the string is altogether dirt'erent. 

 Our desemers are balanced on the string, which is stretched straight 

 bv th(> handle, while the Thibc^tan string forms a sling which closes 

 ujxni the start". This alone would suttice to raise the axis of rotation 

 to about the middle of the start: l)ut, in addition, grooves are cut in 

 the start' of such a form as to i-aise the turning axis still higher. The 

 result is that the Thil)etan desemers oscillate; and. in fact, their sensi- 

 bility is ((uite high, considering the simplicity of their construction. 

 We hav«' seen that they would show distinctly the (>rt'ects of very small 

 weights. Even our (ierman desemer. hung in the same wa}', will show 

 a departure fron\ equilibrium of only one-seventh to one-tenth of an 

 ounce (o or 4 gi'ams). 1 hardly need say that cutting the grooves 

 in\-olv('s the displacement of the scale. It will now l>c ])laced on the 

 side of the stati. where it can l»e read oil during the operation of 

 weighing. It is not necessary, as with our desemers. to turn th«> thing- 

 over and look on the under side. (The desemer of tig. 17 certjiiidy 

 would not upset.) 



We now come to the puzzling (|uestion, how it can be that the 

 German desemers are so uuich ruder than those of Thibet. As far as 

 1 can see there can be no mistake about the fact, though it is so 

 astounding as to raise doubt at first. 1 have examined about lift}' 

 desemers. of which thirty were our property and were in actual use at 

 the time we acquired them. The mode of weighing on strings is the 

 same in all. and the scale is always on the under side. Indeed, the 

 wooden handle for the string can not be managed in any other way. 

 The Russian desemers were used in the sjime way.' Why did not we, 

 like the Thibetiui mountaineers, discover this simple improvement? 

 My opinion is that it was because we were not forced to it. 



In conclusion, let me call attention to one thing more about tlie 

 Clusium balance. We have seen that this weighs down to a single 

 ounce. Now . in the Altmark, the desemer is called '' uenzel." Before 

 the discovery of the Clusium l)alance no satisfactory explanation of 

 this name had ever been suggested. No German desemers capable of 

 weighing to an ounce are known. But perhaps it is now permissible 

 to infer that in the Altmark, which is very rich in Roman remains, 

 balances were formerly in use which, like that of Clusium, weighed to 

 ounces, and that, as the steelyard is called in German a "'pfunder,'"' so 

 the name of these balances passed over to the ordinary desemers and 

 has been retained to this day. 



'But not that of fig. 17, which must oscillate and haa a string. — Tr. 



