170 Sir George Shuckburgh Evelyn's Endeavours 
(§. 38.) From the information in the report of a committee 
of the House of Commons, that sat in the year 1758, I learnt 
that Mr. Bird’s parliamentary standard had been in the cus- 
tody of some of its officers, but of whom nobody knew : how- 
ever, under the authority of the speaker, who was so good as 
to furnish me with a room in his house, to make the compari- 
sons in, I at last discovered this valuable original in the very 
safe keeping of Arthur Benson, Esq. Clerk of the Journals 
and Papers, and which, I believe, had never seen the light for 
five-and-thirty years before. It is a brass rod or bar, about 39 
inches long, and 1 inch square, inclosed in a mahogany frame, 
inscribed “ Standard li? 1758”; at each extremity of it is 
Geo. 2d. 
a gold pin, of about ~ inch in diameter, with a central point, 
and these points are distant = 36 inches. It bears, however, 
no divisions ; but there was found with it, in another box, a 
scale divided into 36 inches, with brass cocks at the extremities, 
for the purpose of sizing or gauging other scales or rules by. 
Besides these, I found another standard, in size, and in all re- 
spects, similar to the last, inscribed 1760, having been made for 
another committee, that sat in that year ; this also was accom- 
panied with a similar divided scale of 3 6 inches. 
These bars being too thick to be conveniently placed under 
the microscopes of my instrument, the interval of 36 stan- 
dard inches was laid down on my scale with a beam-compass, 
two fine points made, and, compared with Troughton’s di- 
visions, was = 36,00023 inches ; the thermometer being at 64, 0 . 
I then examined the other standard, marked “ Standard, 1760”, 
