30 
THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH SYSTEMS 
The u metre,” as a standard, is “ as unstable as water,” for, according to the 
best authority, it is no measure of the quadrant of the earth’s surface; if it 
were the 10-millionth of the quadrant in the meridian of Paris, it must vary in 
every other meridian ; and as it is impossible to square such a measurement, it 
gives us, as an equivalent measure, a circular number of inches and decimal 
parts of an inch, a measure which can never be accurately defined. In the me¬ 
tric system we have the franc, which is called five grammes; in the English 
system we have the penny, the halfpenny, and the farthing, as standard mea¬ 
sures of the pound and the ounce, as well as of the foot and the inch, and it is 
only necessary to legalize their use as weights and measures to give us the best 
means of comparing and dealing out metric quantities. In the penny and the 
pound we do, in fact, possess the most comprehensive and practical standards in 
the world. 
The metric system makes the gramme, the French unit, the weight of a cube 
of water about the size of dice, and this gramme is the metric standard of 
which the kilogramme contains 1000 of such grammes. The English pound of 
7000 grains gives us exactly 10 pounds of water in a gallon. The French pound 
or livre usuelle , now called 500 grammes, is said to be the weight of half a cubic 
decimetre of water, the cubic decimetre being a measure calculated to contain 
two and two-tenths of a pound avoirdupois-weight of water. Now, this measure 
brings English and metric weights into so simple a ratio one to the other, that 
the reduction of metric measures into English is for all practical or commercial 
purposes perfectly easy. 
Let us therefore take things as they are, and make the most of the means we 
fortunately have at our disposal. Let us work out this simple problem before 
we talk of substituting a system which will not stand the test of experience or 
bear comparison with one that practical men cling to because it is sound, and is 
calculated to serve every useful purpose. 
In numeration we have to deal with the natural, the unnatural, the duode¬ 
cimal, and the English systems. The first is the scale of 3, dividing into 9 
parts; the second is the metric or French scale of 10’s ; the duodecimal is the 
scale of dozens; and the English the common scale which is called binary, ge¬ 
nerally dividing into sixteenths. This scale of all the others is found most con¬ 
venient. In prescriptions, for example, the relation between separate ingre¬ 
dients and the total quantity is made octavial in 30 cases to 10 duodecimal to 
1 decimal. In pharmacy there certainly exists an undoubted preference for this 
octavial scale. It is not surprising, because division or multiplication by 5 or 
10 is never necessary, and anything which does not work in harmony with na¬ 
ture sooner or later dies out. In dealing on the metric scale we are also always 
troubled with 5; the metric system begins and ends with 5; it is so far a li¬ 
mited system that will not work well when we have to deal in quantities di¬ 
vided or made up of 3 or its multiples; the metric system also involves the 
reduction of everything into cubes,—straight lines, squares, and cubes have no 
existence in nature, and the highest mechanical skill fails to produce them. It 
is consequently an ideal system, and none of its measures can be obtained 
without mechanical aid. 
The French system unfortunately ignores everything derived from 3 ; it re¬ 
jects 7, 9, 11, 12, and 13 ; it does not know the proof by 9 and serviceable 11; 
it cannot count the dozen, and will not admit sixteenths or any submultiple but 
10; it complicates all dealings in even 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12, and in all prac¬ 
tice is reduced at last to the binary scale. The division of the quadrant into 
hundredths instead of ninetieths has long been abandoned, as navigation soon 
taught that one could only depend upon reckonings founded on the English 
triangular system. We cannot realize the fifth of anything ; nothing will in- 
