Various Systems of Reckoning. 
Ill 
five which go by quarters, may, I think, be found something 
like evidence that the quarter of corn has nothing to do with 
quartus. 
In the butter trade the scale of 7 appears to be the clue to 
the perplexing firkins, tubs, and barrels which weigh respec- 
tively 56, 84, and 224 lb. and fit into each other singularly ill. 
But the firkin contains 8, the tub 12, and the barrel 32 units 
of 7 lb. each. 
Two peculiar reckonings prevail in East Anglia. By one, 
the peck at a corn chandler’s is reckoned at 15 lb. of wheat, 
14 lb. of malting barley, 13 lb. of poultry barley, and 10 lb. of 
oats (320 lb. to the quarter). The railways serving Eastern 
England used to reckon 5 quarters of wheat, beans, or peas to 
the ton of 2,240 lb., 6 quarters of barley, 7 quarters of oats, 
and quarters of malt. Asylums might be filled by people 
attempting to make this logical, but the fact is that a free 
margin was allowed in order to attract custom. The system 
has long since been replaced by the ton, as trucks run into 
tons in their capacity, and trucks are the real railway unit. 
The old railway allowance may, however, still crop up in 
returns of quantities delivered at markets by rail. We refer 
of course to Victorian records. 
With reference to a possible decimal system based on 
the present pound it may be noted that a unit of 10,000 lb. 
would probably suit the railways peculiarly well as, if it 
were in a legal scale, the trucks could easily be built to 
that capacity. There are at present a variety of trucks, but 
the smallest holds 8,960 lb., and the largest, we believe, 
15,680 lb. It is not absolutely impossible that the railway 
companies, amid their present rivalries, might be glad to see 
compulsory uniformity of a certificated 10,000 lb. capacity 
truck. 
Mr. Primrose McConnell has usefully pointed out that to 
get pounds into hundredweights we have to multiply by *00893, 
a fact in itself surely sufficiently condemnatory of the avoirdu- 
pois system. If there is anything still less defensible the milk 
trade of the Midlands supplies it with its “ barn gallon” of 17 
pints. To lay upon humanity the burden of a high indivisible 
number like 17 is an offence for which there surely should 
be “imprisonment without the option of a fine.” 
In the Mark Lane Express for October 22, 1906, we 
have the argument for trying to grow malting barley put 
as follows : — 
“The fault is not with the price which maltsters and fine ale brewers are 
willing to pay. Their buyers are commissioned to pay a penny per lb. for the 
fine bright types of barley, whereas wheat at present fetches only '67 of a penny 
per lb., and oats are *63 of a penny per lb.” 
