COMPARATIVE METROLOGY. 377 



was of course in reality no general archetype. One measure- 

 maker copied another with more or less accuracy, and all we 

 can do with respect to absolute magnitudes, is to determine as 

 well as we can their average value. The intention only is ideal, 

 and this cannot have reference to the tradition of standards of 

 the same denomination, but to the relations among different 

 standards. I add a few words of etymology. There can be 

 no doubt that orgyia is properly oregyia, and is derived from 

 orego. Thus the word means the ^stretch, which is not, properly 

 speaking, the meaning of either, of fathom or of the French 

 brasse, though all three words in effect mean the same thing, 

 namely, the greatest distance at which the finger-tips of the two 

 hands can be placed from each other. Brasse comes from em- 

 brasser, and suggests the idea of a man putting his arms round 

 a pillar or a tree. Whether any appreciable difference exists 

 between the girth of a tree which a man could just embrace 

 and what we call a fathom I do not know, nor am I likely to 

 try the experiment. Fathom has the same origin as brasse, 

 as we may see without referring to Anglo-Saxon in the modern 

 Danish, in which favn, a fathom, is obviously connected with 

 the verb favne, to embrace. The latter, by the way, we have 

 in English, in to fawn, though we only use it figuratively, 

 or with reference to dogs who cannot properly be said to em- 

 brace those whom they caress. The word orgyia, besides con- 

 firming the common etymology of agyia from ago suggests 

 another which I do not remember to have seen, namely, aithyia 

 from aitho. Nothing can be more natural than to call a sea- 

 bird swift on the wing, and whose feathers are often sprinkled 

 with sea-water when it dashes down after its prey, the gleamer 

 or flasher. I have noticed, probably after a shower, absolute 

 flashes of light from pigeons wheeling in the sunshine, and the 

 same thing must happen more frequently in the case of sea- 

 birds. 



6. Nothing of the kini is more permanent than the fix- 

 ation of land-marks. Many causes which affect the tradition of 

 other measures produce no effect on that of agrarian. It is 

 probable that the majority of our fields had their present limits, 

 or nearly so, at the time Domesday Book was compiled, and yet 

 the estimation of their magnitude may have varied. The tradi- 



