WEIGHTS AND MEASUBEa 



WEIGHTS AXH MK ASI*RES. 



would in all oases carefully state that four grain* of lnrl.-y placed tide 

 by aibVs give their firet tod lowest measure, unless they were at leut 

 repeating a well-established tradition, founded upon an actual mode of 

 meMuremcut According to this mode, 64 grain*, placed side by aide, 

 ought to give their foot : we believe it will be found very difficult to 

 make any barley of our day give more than 10 inche*. On trying the 

 first grain* we obtained, we found that, by picking out the largest 

 grain*, 33 of them just gave more, and 32 ten, than five inches : but 

 that, taking the grains as they came, 38 gave only five inches. Not 

 wishing however to trust to one trial, we procured the largest (pen- 

 man of barley which could be got from two different and distant parts 

 of England, and from these specimens, already selected as choice 

 samples, we picked out the largest grains. In a first sample, 33 grains 

 placed side by side gave five inches ; in a second. 33 grains gave five 

 inches and one tenth ; in a third, 33 grains gave also 5 inches and one- 

 tenth. And yet these samples differed apparently in bulk ; but on 

 examination we found that the Itngtht of the grain* differed materially, 

 their breadths very little. So that the ancient English standard 

 which depended, or wu said to have depended, upon the lengths of 

 barley-corns placed end to end, was not founded upon so sure a method 

 as that above described, which depended upon the breadths. The foot 

 of 64 barley-corns derived from the average of the preceding (rejecting 

 that from the smaller grains of the London sample) is 9 inches and 

 eight-tenths of an inch, rather smaller than might be supposed from 

 the other methods of judging, which, however, it must be remembered, 

 have been pushed to their utmost. 



We feel persuaded from all that precedes, not only that at the 

 beginning of the 16th century there was no distinction made between 

 the measures of the learned and the Roman measures, but that the 

 Roman foot, the foundation of all, was taken to be considerably shorter 

 than the truth, having been probably recovered from the human body. 

 Long after the introduction of sounder notions, we see traces of the 

 same sort of thing. For instance, in the second edition of the mathe- 

 matical Lexicon of Vitalis (1690), the first edition (1668) being silent 

 on the matter, an article on measures is introduced in which the only 

 authorities alluded to are the ' Dies Oeniales ' of Alexander ab Alex- 

 andro, in which there is nothing but description of ancient measures, 

 and the work of George Agricola already cited. The Roman foot was 

 recovered with tolerable ease as soon as it was looked for. Leonard di 

 Portia, an Italian lawyer, gave its length from the Colot.ian foot here- 

 after noticed ; and Lucas Peetus, another lawyer, wrote elaborately on 

 the ancient weights and measures in 1573. Those who would see more 

 of this subject in the 16th century must search for the writings of 

 Alciatua, Alcasar, Geo. Agricola, Budaeus, Budelius, Capellus, Mon- 

 tanua, Mariana, Lebrixa (Nebrissensis), Neander, Pasi, Pictus, Portius, 

 Villalpandus, &c. 



A* soon as the middle period is past, the history of weights and 

 measures down to our own time ceases to be European, and, with the 

 exception of those of England and France, we need not, in BO short a 

 sketch as the present, give any very close account of the various 

 national measures. 



In Kngland, it seems as if the standards were tolerably well settled 

 and widely diffused at so early a period that the writers of this country 

 took comparatively little notice of the system which the continental 

 mathematicians used for their own communications. That the ear of 

 barley and of wheat were actually used in determining the standards, 

 seem* to admit of no doubt. The statute 51 Henry HI. (A.D. 1266) 

 enacts, " that an English penny, t called the sterling, round, without 

 clipping, should weigh 32 grains of wheat, well dried and gathered out 

 of the middle of the ear ; and twenty pence to make an ounce, twelve 

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

 wine a bushel of London, which is the eighth part of a quarter." 

 Again, 17 Edward II. (A.D. 1824) provides that three barley-corns, 

 round and dry, make an inch, 1 2 inches a foot, Ac. And the interpreta- 

 tion of the older scientific writers on measures is agreeable to the 

 common meaning of the words. " Look to the first grounde," says 

 Oughtred, "and principle of our English measuring, from Barley - 

 cornes." But it is so difficult to know how much of the sharp end of 

 a barley-corn must be cut or worn away before it becomes what was 

 called " round," that this mode of measuring by the Unytht of barley- 

 corns is very indefinite. Standards were made at early periods and 

 enforced by various statutes; one of the earliest is one of Edward I. 

 of uncertain date, which directs that a standard of bushels, gallons, 

 and ells, shall be kept in every town, agreeing with the king's measure. 

 With regard to the measure of length, this country has been fortunate, 

 and its standards have, for commercial purposes, fully deserved the 

 name. But the measure! of capacity [GALLON] remained various in 

 spite of all acts of Parliament. In the year 1650 there were three 

 distinct modes of determining a wine gallon : 1, From general opinion, 

 which gave 231 cubic inches, and with which, in fact, the gallons in 

 common use agreed, as was proved by the measurement* of Oughtred, 

 Uunter, Briggs, and others. 2, The customary standard at the 

 < imldh.il), which, though not a legal standard, was considered a* such, 

 even by the law-officers of the crown, and which, though in reality 

 only 224 cubic inches, was always taken to be 231 inches. 8, The real 



We do not bellrre the story of Henry I. ordering that the yard should be 

 of UM length of hi. arm. 

 f A nUrrr penny. 



legal standard, preserved at the Treasury, containing 282 cubic inches. 

 Oughtred says that the difference between the ale and wine gall 

 " that because of the frothing of the ale or beer, the quantity Deoometh 

 lease, and therefore such liquors as did not so yield froth, as wine, oyle, 

 and the like, should in reason have a lesser measure." The K?i 

 one of the Committees states that the wine gallon had been gradually 

 shrinking in capacity, until it was arrested at 231 cubic inches by a 

 fiscal definition. That this value was laid down by the statute of 5 

 Anne, cap. 27, is certain ; and the origin of this definition (which i 

 inserted into a statute having nothing to do with weights and measures) 

 seems to have been as follows : A little after 1700, an information 

 was tried in the Exchequer against one Barker, for having imported 

 more of Alicant wine than he nad paid duty for. On the part of tin- 

 crown it was contended that the sealed gallon at Guildhall (said to 

 contain 281 cubic inches) was the standard. But the defendant* 

 appealed to the law which required that a standard gallon should be 

 kept at the Treasury, proved that there was such a gallon at the 

 Treasury containing 282 cubic inches, and established, by the evidence 

 of the oldest persons in the trade, that the butts and hogsheads which 

 came from Spain had always contained the proper number of the real 

 standard gallons. A juror was withdrawn, and the law-officers of the 

 crown took no further proceedings except procuring the above act. 

 A better instance of confusion could hardly be imagined : the legal 

 gallon had gradually been diminished more than 50 cubic inches ; the 

 merchants in one particular trade continued to import and to pay duty 

 by the real gallon, and were finally called to account by the attorney- 

 general, who, in common with the rest of the world, had forgotten 

 what the real gallon was, and sued for penalties upon appeal to what 

 was no more a legal standard than the measure in a private shop. 



There is something curious about the history of the (Kperimeut 

 [GALLON] mentioned by Ward, who was an eye- witness, and wrote just 

 after the statute of Anne, when his account could do no harm. Th-- 

 gallon was found to be 224 (Wollaston afterwards found it to be 224'4) 

 cubic inches, that is, the sealed gallon at Guildhall : but, " for several 

 reasons, it was at that time thought convenient to continue the former 

 supposed content of 231 cubic inches." This means, as explained by 

 the Committee of 1758, that the Lords of the Treasury direct an 

 authority to be drawn for gauging according to the Guildhall gallon ; 

 the merchants immediately petition to be allowed to sell as they were 

 gauged ; the commissioners of customs do not follow the order (which 

 however it does not appear was ever signed) ; and when the Lords of 

 the Treasury take the attorney-general's opinion upon it, they are 

 recommended to make no change : " For if the usage of gauging is 

 departed from, he knows not where we shall be, because resort cannot 

 be had to the Exchequer for a standard to which almost all the 

 statutes refer ; for there is none there but what the king will be vastly 

 a loser by." 



The old division of the gallon into that of wine measure, ale and 

 beer measure, and dry t measure, was not only unknown to the law, 

 but even to the writers on arithmetic, till the beginning of tli> 

 century. Nor when Briggs, Oughtred, &c. measured the gallons, did 

 they divide them into more than two kinds for ale and \\in.-. 

 Oughtred, who measured pecks, bushels, &c., and thence found '27'2^ 

 cubic inches for the deduced gallon, imagines this to be the ale gallon. 

 It was undoubtedly the old Winchester gallon, before its content was 

 a little reduced by the statute of 1697; this gallon still continued in 

 use in Ireland up to the introduction of the imperial measurt - 

 even in England, as late as 1727, Arbuthnot takes it for the existing 

 dry measure. Perhaps we have the first time in which, and the first 

 person by whom, the distinction of the corn and ale gallon was made, 

 in the following citation from Wybcrd (' Tactometria,' 1650, p. 266) : 

 " Now as to Mr. Oughtred's ale gallon of -272; inches, the said Mr. 

 Reynolds " (John Reynolds, a clerk in the Mint, often referred to by 

 Wyberd as a mathematician and experimenter) ' ' indeed alloweth of 

 such a Gallon measure, but not for any liquid tiling, but for dri 

 things, as Come, Coals, Salt, and other dry things measurable by this 

 kind of Measure, and so calleth it the drie Gallon measure : and there- 

 upon he wil have to be 3 severall Gallons (or other like Measures), one 

 for 11 ine* (which also serveth for oiles, strong-waters, and the like), 

 another for Ale and Beer, and a third for Come, Coalet, and the like." 

 Wyberd, rejecting the distinction of the dry and ale gallons, made his 

 wine and ale gallons to be 224 and 266 cubic inches, by a series of 

 carefully conducted experiments : it is singular that a good experi- 

 menter, with access to existing standards, and as good an experimenter 



* We were wrong, wo belicre, in stating in GALLON that the <rinr gallon 

 was determined by statutes of 1689 and 1S97 : those' related to the other gallons. 

 But there is singular confusion in the Reports of the Committee, which nothing 

 but a new search into the actual statutes will remove. 



f We do not mean that there was no distinction between liquid and dry 

 measure, but that there wan no distinction between the gallons of those measures. 

 Thus Mellis, In the arithmetic appended to his treatise on book-keeping (1S88), 

 very distinctly separates the liquid and dry measures, but uses only one gallon, 

 namely that of which the pint is one pound. It may be worth while to add 

 that the mile of 1780 yards is mentioned by this writer four years before it 

 became the statute mile. 



The preface to the ' Pathway of Knowledge,' already cited, makes no distinc- 

 tion between the ale and wine gallon ; it says that the wine gallon is the same 

 as that of ale, and contains eight pounds of wine ; it also makes the corn gallon 

 contain eight pounds of wheat. 



