1881.] Weights and Measures Question Reconsidered . 347 
protectionist principles, our business with the metric coun- 
tries is not likely to increase, and it may become at least an 
open question whether under these circumstances such 
facilitation of business may not be in certain cases unde- 
sirable. 
There is one department in which a step in advance might 
be taken by the supercession of all systems of weights, and 
the adoption simply of “ parts.” In all receipts, prescrip- 
tions, or formulas of every kind, such “ parts ” should be the 
sole standard, everything being expressed by weight. Every 
person using the formula would refer these “parts” to his 
own standards, whether these were grains or grammes, 
pounds or kilos. In this manner all fractions are avoided. 
I fear that the spread of the metric system has aCted unfa- 
vourably upon this simplest of all methods. 
There is another way of drawing up receipts common in 
America, and exceedingly simple. The ingredients to be 
used are expressed as a percentage on the substance to be 
operated upon. Thus, suppose it is desired to dye 100 lbs. wool 
a cochineal scarlet, the receipt directs us to take so much 
per cent of cochineal, oxalic acid, chloride of tin, flavine, &c. 
It strikes me that the percentage system might be extended 
to medicine. Physiologists find in their researches that a 
drug becomes poisonous, or exhibits some lower degree of 
activity, when it bears such or such a proportion to the entire 
weight of the animal to which it is administered. Perhaps 
it will be found that the weight of a sick person furnishes 
the scale of the doses of medicine which . may be usefully 
given. 
For strictly scientific purposes I fail to see that the 
gramme, the litre, and their multiples and sub-multiples, 
have any advantage over the grain and the grain-measure. 
The introduction of the metric system into retail trade, 
especially without the re-organisation I sketched out, would 
prove not merely inconvenient, but positively injurious to the 
great body of the nation, especially to the working-classes, 
since certain “pushing” tradesmen would not fail to utilise 
the new and imperfeCtly-known weights and measures as a 
basis for imposition. 
There is a further consideration : — Hitherto we have been 
utterly unable to enforce unity of weights and measures on 
the old system. A peck of potatoes, apples, &c., is 20 lbs 
in Lancashire, 21 lbs. in Sheffield, 14 lbs. in Huddersfield 
and 16 lbs. in Halifax. A stone of anything is in some dis- 
tricts 14, and in others 16 lbs. The gill is in the No^th of 
England half a pint, but in the South only a quarter. 
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