CONVENTION  FOR  REVISING  THE  PHARMACOPEIA.  375 
Mr.  Taylor  then  addressed  the  Convention  in  advocacy  of  abolishing  the 
troy  and  avoirdupois  scales  now  in  use,  and  substituting  the  grain  as  the  unit 
for  all  weights  less  than  a  pound  avoirdupois — beyond  that  he  would  use 
pounds.  He  would  also  do  away  with  Roman  symbols,  and  use  the  com- 
mon Arabic  figures.  He  thought  this  better  than  the  plan  now  proposed  in 
Great  Britain. 
Dr.  Squibb  read  an  extract  from  the  united  proceedings  of  the  New  York 
Academy  of  Medicine  and  the  New  York  College  of  Pharmacy  on  this  sub- 
ject. 
Mr.  Parrish  advocated  the  abolition  of  the  present  anomalous  weights, and 
was  in  favor  of  the  avoirdupois  ounce  and  pound. 
Mr.  Procter  also  favored  the  adoption  of  avoirdupois  weight  as  the  only 
one  to  be  used. 
Dr.  Bache  thought  it  better,  for  the  sake  of  uniformity,  to  wait  the  action 
of  the  British  Commissioners  on  the  subject  of  the  consolidation  of  the  Lon- 
don, Edinburgh  and  Dublin  Pharmacopoeias  into  a  British  Pharmacopoeia. 
He  was  himself  against  changing  the  troy  grain,  and  hoped  the  British 
Commissioners  would  not.  He  preferred  the  French  system  grammes  and 
centigrammes,  doing  away  the  decigrammes  ;  but  as  there  was  little  hope  of 
this  system  being  adopted  in  Great  Britain,  it  would  be  best  to  wait  and  see 
what  was  done  there  before  we  act. 
Mr.  Meakim  advocated  the  "  grain"  standard. 
Mr.  Parrish  preferred  the  ounce. 
Mr.  Procter  said  that  even  in  France  now,  in  many  of  their  best  works  on 
pharmacy,  they  virtually  reject  the  decimal  division  and  go  back  to  the  old 
ante-revolutionary  division  of  half,  quarters,  eighths,  sixteenths,  &c.  by 
often  employing  numbers  of  grammes  which  bear  these  relation  to  eacli 
other. 
The  subject  of  weights  and  measures  was  then  dropped. 
Dr.  Squibb  moved  a  vote  of  thanks  to  the  President,  the  Secretary,  and 
Assistant  Secretary,  when,  on  motion  of  Dr.  Bache,  the  Convention  ad- 
journed sine  die. 
After  the  adjournment  of  the  Convention,  Mr.  Thomas  E.  Jenkins,  of  Ken- 
tucky, presented  to  the  Secretary  his  credentials  as  a  delegate  from  the  Col- 
lege of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  of  Louisville,  Ky, 
