THE METRIC SYSTEM. 727 



division of single units, even among users of our own clumsy sys- 

 tem of weights and measures. 



In weight, for instance, we in the United States have long ago 

 decided that a hundredweight shall be a hundred pounds, as its 

 name implies, and not a hundred and twelve as in England, and 

 our ton is almost universally two thousand pounds, although 

 we still retain the traditional ton of twenty-two hundred and 

 forty pounds in certain transactions ; and as if to emphasize the 

 utter absurdity of the thing, in some parts of New England a 

 "long" or "gross" ton of coal weighs twenty- two hundred 

 pounds. In many extensive calculations the avoirdupois pound 

 is adopted as the only unit of weight, and fractional parts are 

 expressed in tenths, hundredths, etc. ; and this is found to reduce 

 the labor of such calculations enormously. In length measure 

 the tendency toward decimalization is still more marked. In land 

 surveying and in engineering operations it is now the all but uni- 

 versal practice to use the foot as the unit and multiply and divide 

 decimally. Even in the traditional " surveyor's chain," with its 

 one hundred links, each being 7*92 inches in length, there was a 

 serious attempt to secure some of the advantages of decimaliza- 

 tion, but it is quite superseded now by the one-hundred-foot tape, 

 with its divisions of ten feet each, and each foot divided into 

 tenths, etc. In reference to the chain, a quotation from the book 

 from which the tables given above are extracted, will not be with- 

 out interest. After explaining that by a rather laborious process 

 the following measures of surface may be derived : 



144 square inches are 1 square foot, 



9 " feet " 1 " yard, 



30* " yards " 1 " pole, 



40 " poles " 1 rood, 



4 roods are 1 acre, 



the author remarks : * Thus the acre contains forty-eight hun- 

 dred and forty square yards, which is ten times a square of twenty- 

 two yards in length and breadth. This twenty-two yards is the 

 length which land-surveyors' chains are made to have, and the 

 chain is divided into one hundred links, each 0'22 of a yard or 7*92 

 inches. An acre is, then, ten square chains. It may also be no- 

 ticed that a square whose side is sixty-nine yards and four sev- 

 enths is nearly an acre, not exceeding it by a fifth of a square 

 foot." This is a fair example of the beautiful simplicity of a 

 system which all English-speaking people are assumed to under- 

 stand and which many of them are reluctant to give up. 



Again, in accurate machine-shop practice the use of decimal 

 divisions is becoming almost universal. The unit is generally the 

 inch, and it is subdivided into tenths, hundredths, thousandths, 

 etc. " True to one hundredth, or one thousandth, or one ten-thou- 



