JaiNUAEY 15, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



119 



is to be the party defendant, or to the Supreme 

 Court if Cornell should be the responsible de- 

 fendant. In neither case, however, should any 

 burden be placed upon the university. 



Mk. James Boyle, TJ. S. Consul at Liver- 

 pool, England, writes to the Department of 

 State that the British government has taken 

 the iirst step toward the adoption of the 

 decimal system of weights. It has just been 

 announced by the Board of Trade that, iinder 

 a special order in council, it will sanction the 

 use of a weight of 50 pounds, instead of the 

 present standards of 112 pounds (called a 

 hundredweight) and 56 pounds (called a half 

 hundredweight). The 50 pounds is by this 

 action made a legal standard of weight. This 

 reform has been adopted after forty years of 

 agitation by Liverpool merchants and later 

 on by petitions to the government by the 

 chambers of commerce throughout the coun- 

 try, and particularly by the chamber of com- 

 merce of this city. Liverpool has felt the 

 necessity for the change more than any other 

 city, as this is the leading entrepot for Ameri- 

 can and colonial produce of bulk, the weighing 

 of which is a considerable item in the handling 

 and, indeed, in the ultimate cost of the ship- 

 ments. More cotton, corn, provisions and 

 tobacco are imported into Liverpool than into 

 any other city in the world, and by far the 

 largest proportion of these imports come from 

 the United States; so the United States is 

 peculiarly interested in the reform just insti- 

 tuted. The Liverpool Journal of Commerce 

 comments approvingly as follows : 



All these great quantities are calculated by the 

 American sellers in pounds avoirdupois, but by 

 the British buyers they have had to be counted 

 in hundredweights, quarters, and pounds, in ac- 

 cordance with our antiquated and absurd and 

 anomalous system of weights. What is the con- 

 sequence ? To give a concrete example : The buyer 

 wishes to ascertain, say, the weight of 100 pounds 

 of tobacco; to do so the nearest weight he can 

 employ is a qvuirter, or 56 pounds, to which must 

 be added smaller weights until the exact quantity 

 is ascertained. But two 50-pound weights will 

 give him the exact amount at once; three will 

 give him the weight of 150 pounds, four 200 

 pounds, and so on, smaller weights being used for 

 fractions of 50 pounds. The consequence is an 

 enormous simplification of calculation. It should 



be remembered that the men wlio weigh these 

 materials at the docks are not, as a rule, mathe- 

 maticians wlio can tell the time of day by algebra. 

 They are largely day laborers, who have not had 

 a superior education, and to weigh quantities 

 with a set of weiglits necessitating the calculation 

 of fractions of pounds, and thereby the use of 

 dozens of small weiglits, necessitates a mental 

 effort of which all are not capable, and the use 

 of a multiplicity of weiglits wliicli confuses them 

 leads to errors and loss of time — and time is 

 money. But by the adoption of a 50-pound 

 weight a unit of calculation has been obtained 

 which will sweep away a whole set of weights, 

 prevent errors, and save confusion, time and 

 money. It should be remembered that the pres- 

 ent complicated and wasteful method of calcula- 

 ting weigths lias to be gone through four times — 

 first, when the goods are warehoused; second, 

 by the customs, for the purpose of duty; third, 

 in the counting-house; and fourth, in the factory 

 — and in all these cases the same cumbrous sys- 

 tem of calculation by hundredweiglits, quarters 

 and pounds has to be gone through, and the loss 

 of time, convenience and money quadrupled. But 

 by the adoption of a 50-pound weight, though four 

 separate calculations will still be necessary, they 

 can be done simply and quickly. The savings in 

 bookkeeping will alone be great. The present 

 system necessitates a maze of figures of different 

 denominations; but by their reduction to the one 

 common denominator of pounds weight whole 

 columns of figures will be saved and the risk of 

 mistakes minimized. 



Americans have great difficulty in under- 

 standing the English system of weights — ■ 

 almost as much as they encounter in trying 

 to understand the English fractional system 

 of coinage. Eor instance, if you ask a man 

 here how much he weighs he will tell you, say, 

 ' 11 stone 7.' A ' stone ' is 14 pounds ; so 11 

 stone would be 154 pounds, and adding the 

 extra 1 pounds the weight given would be 161 

 pounds. Even Englishmen ' to the manner 

 born ' have to make a mental calculation in 

 arriving at the result in pounds in such a 

 case. Sometimes provisions and other articles 

 are sold at so much a stone, and then if the 

 quantity purchased weighs a few odd pounds 

 over a stone or a number of stones the pur- 

 chaser and seller have to figure out the price 

 per pound. It is the hope and expectation 

 that the results from the adoption of the new 



