American Association. 247 



rolina — Nortli Carolina flour liaviug been reported tlie finest 

 specimen at the great exhibition in London — that of red wheat 

 40 to 43 grains were required to balance a grain of silver, and 

 from 28 to 35 or 36 grains of white wheat effected the same thing. 

 In short, grains were not intended to serve as a just measure for 

 perfect comparison, multiplication or division. Again, there was 

 no such thing naturally as pure silver. It was produced only by 

 art, and imperfectly reduced silver could not offer any just rule 

 for the adjustment of weights and coinage. Attempts had been 

 made to ascertain the purity of a silver penny of William the 

 Conqueror, and it turned out there were in it 40-1000 of some base 

 alloy. Now, in the U. S. Mint, at present, 3-1000 of alloy was all 

 that was allowed for casual impurities. It was now never intended 

 to make the metal perfectly pure ; but whatever its purity, the rule 

 adopted must be exactly followed out both with respect to the 

 proportion of the precious metal and of the alloy. The old silver 

 penny was a coin, a weight and a measure, and as its character of 

 purity changed, the characters of all moneys, weights, and mea- 

 sures deduced from it were changed in the same j^roportion, for 

 they did not depend upon the one element of weight or fineness ; 

 but on the products of both. The key stone was a penny ster- 

 ling ; but an error in this key stone made the whole arch fall, 

 because the metallurgical inaccuracy was not checked by any 

 metrical exactness. The bases being inaccurate no truth could 

 be elicited from calculations founded upon them." 



Troy weight being thus illustrated, the following remarks were 

 made on the carat weights of the East :-— "Among Eastern nations 

 carat grains were used to determine the weight of Pearls and 

 precious stones. Originally a bean, the Karat, was thought when 

 dry to vary very little in weight. A natural section divides this 

 bean into halves, which are again cut into quarters and are again 

 divideJ, the smaller divisions being used to mark the different de- 

 grees of fineness of gold and silver The Chinese use a peculiar 

 kind of pea and grains of maize and Indian corn. In Sumatra 

 grains of rice are used. Thus a gardener's trade basket 

 seems to have aftbrded all the standards required, and all the 

 weights wanted by our ancestors, until nearly the close of the last 

 century. The author then went on to show by the result of 

 various trials the great discrepancy really existing between these 

 original standards of weight, some grains weighing twice as much 

 as others. Hebrew writers say that the barley corn was an 



