OF MONEY-WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 3l 
duce an Englishman to say that two and two make five, or that it is possible for 
any Frenchman to cut his cheese into five equal parts. 
The franc is supposed to be five grammes-weight, but how are we to realize 
the fifth? how can we get at a true gramme-weight? The half-quarter eighth 
or sixteenth may be got at, for we can halve any quantity, and, so, go on ad 
infinitum. We may calculate the quantity, but, after all, that is but an esti¬ 
mate, and we come at last, as the French do, to calling the gramme a weight 
equal to 4 gros. 
On the other hand, the English system, which comprehends all that is prac¬ 
tical and useful in the decimal and duodecimal as well as natural scale, only 
requires ordinary intelligence and the “ rule of thumb ” to work out all our 
moneys, weights, and measures, and a little knowledge of arithmetic will enable 
any one to convert our money, weights, and measures into very close approxi¬ 
mates to the metric. 
The English system thus enters into the metric; in fact, we have all the ad¬ 
vantages of the use of decimals as applied to money, weights, and measures, and 
in calculations, as well as the bookiug of accounts, we are not only able to 
write off our money in decimals of the pound; but the binary scale of subdivi¬ 
sions enables us to make the best use of perfect decimals, and to substitute by 
reciprocals short divisions for often very long multiplications. 
In the penny and the pound we possess useful, tangible, and good standard 
weights; and in making use of our pence, halfpence, and farthings (coined since 
1860), we require no other weights or measures of any kind to compare or mea¬ 
sure off metric quantities. 
As apothecaries’ weights are in question, for the sake of beginning at the 
beginning, we will take the grain as the English atom, and the gros as the 
French, and reduce the gramme to measures in these units, with which we are 
most familiar. For this purpose we shall take the penny and the pound, the ounce 
and the inch, the half-pint and the gallon, as standards for comparison with the 
franc and the half-gramme, the half-kilo or livre usuelle , and the half-litre, 
which is to the Frenchman what the half-pint is to the Englishman (not quite 
large enough). 
Every Englishman knows that a pint of wheat is called a pound, that the 
half-pint is exactly ten ounces of water. We also know that the gallon is a 
measure of any form, containing ten pounds of water. Every Englishman ought 
to know that our penny is the third of an ounce, the halfpenny the fifth of an 
ounce, and that we have twelve pence to a quarter of a pound, while the penny’s 
width is the tenth of the foot. In the halfpenny we have the inch and the fifth 
of an ounce, so that there are eight halfpence in a tenth of a pound, and as the 
farthing or “fourthing” has been made to weigh one-half of the halfpenny; 
the farthing is the sixteenth, and may be considered the English decimal unit. 
The legal ounce is one of 437^ grains, and we have now sixteen drams to the 
ounce, as well as sixteen ounces to the pound of 7000 grains. Medicines are 
compounded in measures of grains up to 60 grains, apothecaries’ weights being 
generally made up of sixteenths of the grain, and 1, 2, etc., up to sixty grain- 
weights (sixteen avoirdupois drams to the ounce). Apothecaries thus dispense 
on the old scale (eight drachms of three scruples of eighteen grains), while they 
use avoirdupois-weights and grain-weights only. 
The practice in the metric system is to treat the metric atom or the gramme 
as a weight equal to 4 gros; the so-called metric ounce of 31£ grammes is made 
one of 30, so that 30 in the metric system is taken for 31|-. We are cheated, 
too, because they call for convenience our % ounce 7^ grammes, as the metric 
system does not produce a corresponding weight; thus in practice they are 
compelled to accept a binary scale of 30 grammes as an ounce. 
