^°'jln"i88r'°'"}       French  Metric  System,  Orthography.  9 
THE  ORTHOGRAPHY  OF  THE  UNITS  OF  THE  FRENCH 
METRIC  SYSTEM. 
By  Prof.  Jos.  P.  Remington. 
Read  at  the  Pharmaceutical  Meeting  December  21st. 
The  adoption  of  the  metric  system,  or  at  least  its  partial  adoption,  l)y 
the  convention  appointed  to  make  arrangements  for  the  revision  of  the 
United  States  Pharmacopoeia,  necessitates  the  consideration  of  the 
orthography  of  the  units. 
There  Avonld  be  no  necessity  for  this  consideration  were  it  not  for 
the  fact  that  the  tendency,  luider  the  guise  of  phonetic  reform,  to  alter 
the  original  spelling  is  very  marked. 
The  American  metric  bureau  has  rendered  yeoman  service  in  intro- 
ducing the  system  into  our  country.  The  enterprise,  energy  and  gO(jd 
business  management  which  characterizes  this  agency  is  well  known, 
and  yet,  in  the  writer's  opinion,  a  great  mistake  has  been  committed  in 
altering  the  original  orthography  of  the  units. 
When  the  various  countries  throughout  the  world  adopted  the  metric 
system  certain  changes  were  made  in  the  names  of  the  units  and  in  the 
various  denominations  in  a  few  nations,  in  order  to  adapt  them  to  the 
language  of.  each  individual  country,  to  satisfy  a  caprice,  because  of 
an  antipathy  to  the  French  nation,  or  for  some  political  reason.  In  the 
Netherlands,  for  instance,  the  metric  system  has  been  in  use  since  1871, 
but  with  Dutch  names — strup,  duim,  elle,  roede,  korrel,  lood,  ons,  etc. 
But  can  it  be  justly  said  that  reason  has  been  consulted  in  making  the 
trivial  changes  that  the  United  States  proposes  to  adopt? 
Metre,  litre  and  gramme  are  to  be  changed  to  meter,  liter  and  gram. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  the  change  is  made  in  order  to  conform  to  the 
language  of  the  country,  for  we  have  no  American  language,  and  our 
mother-tongue,  the  English,  resolutely  rejects  the  parallel  Americanisms 
center  for  centre,  theater  for  theatre,  etc.,  and  thus  the  plea  of  common 
usage  cannot  be  upheld,  nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  United  States,  as  a 
nation,  has  any  antipathy  for  the  French,  and  the  notion  that  politics 
had  a  hand  in  authorizing  the  change  cannot  be  entertained  here  •  it 
must  have  been  caprice. 
Let  us  look  a  little  more  closely  at  the  individual  changes  proposed. 
Meter  for  metre. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  the  Websterian  innovation  is  any  shorter, 
we  have  in  each  case  the  same  number  of  letters.  Webster,  in 
his  dictionary,  gives  both  ways  of  spelling  it.  The  Latin  word,  metrum, 
