to remember how many kilderkins there are not
in an acre, or how many firkins make a peck—
no tables in the arithmetic-book give an idea of
the customary confusion in our British weights
and measures. It is almost as hard to deal
safely at home between county and county, as
with the foreigner between country and country.
There are in this country alone no fewer than
twenty different ideas of a bushel. A bushel of
oats means thirty-eight pounds, or at Liverpool
it means forty-five pounds, or in Cornwall it
means twenty-four gallons; but a bushel of
barley means here forty-seven, there fifty, there
fifty-two and a half, somewhere else sixty pounds,
or forty-nine, or fifty-six; a bushel of beans
means sixty-three pounds; of peas, sixty-four;
of corn, at Manchester, say, sixty pounds if an
Englishman, seventy if an American, is speaking;
seventy-three pounds and a half at
Darlington; sixty-three in Lincolnshire; eighty in
Monmouthshire; and in some places four
hundred and eighty-eight. We go to Saltash,
perhaps, after learning in our tables that there
are eight bushels in a quarter, and discover that
in that part of the world there are five quarters
to a bushel. A load of wheat means in one part
of the country five quarters, in another five
bushels, in another three bushels. If I buy
wheat at Swansea, I must order by the stack of
three bushels; if at Barnard Castle, by the boll
of two bushels, and must not, when I compare
quantity and price, confuse this boll with two
other bolls, one of two hundred and forty, the
other of two hundred and eighty pounds. If I
buy at Beccles, I must order by the coomb of
two hundred and forty pounds. If at Preston,
by the windle of two hundred and twenty. If
at Wrexham, by the hobbet of one hundred and
sixty-eight. But, even if I do happen to know
what a hobbet of wheat means at Wrexham,
that knowledge, good for Flint, is not good for
Caernarvonshire. A hobbet of wheat at Pwlheli
contains eighty-four pounds more than a hobbet
at Wrexham; and a hobbet of oats is something
altogether different; and a hobbet of barley is
something altogether different again.

Our acknowledged learnable weights are bad
enough, for there are no fewer than ten
conflicting systems in national use. Decimal grains
for the scientific troy weight of 5 Geo. IV.,
c. 74; troy ounce with decimal multiples called
bullion weights; bankers' weights; apothecaries'
weights; diamond weights and pearl weights,
including carats; avoirdupois weight, born the
same day as troy; weights for hay and straw;
coal weight; and wool weight, using as factors
two, three, seven, and thirteen. But, practically,
everything in the way of weight and measure
seems to go its own gait, now on the appointed
highway, now in the hedge, or over the hedge,
now in the ditch, it goes staggering up and
down the country with a sort of drunken
independence. A gallon isn't a gallon. It's a wine
gallon, or one of three different sorts of ale
gallon, or a corn gallon, or a gallon of oil; and
the gallon of oil means seven and a half pounds
for train oil, and eight pounds for some other
oils. If you buy a pipe of wine how much do
you get? Ninety-three gallons if the wine be
Marsala, ninety-two if Madeira, a hundred and
seventeen if Bucellas, a hundred and three if
port, a hundred if Teneriffe. What is a stone?
Fourteen pounds of a living man, eight of
a slaughtered bullock, sixteen of cheese, five
of glass, thirty- two of hemp, sixteen and
three-quarters of flax at Belfast, four-and-
twenty of flax at Downpatrick. It is fourteen
pounds of wool as sold by the growers, fifteen
pounds of wool as sold by the woolstaplers to
each other. There are seven measures in use to
define an acre. A hundred-weight may contain
a hundred, a hundred and twelve, or a hundred
and twenty pounds. A hundred-weight of pork
is eight pounds heavier at Belfast than at Cork.
A man might live by selling coal at a less price
per ton than he paid for it at the pit mouth. A
ton of coal at the pit mouth varies from twenty-
two to twenty-eight hundred-weight of a
hundred and twenty pounds each; a ton to the
householder means twenty hundred-weight of a
hundred and twelve pounds each. Of cheese,
thirty-two cloves (of eight pounds each) make a
wey in Essex, forty-two in Suffolk. We walk
in this United Kingdom by the measure of four
sorts of miles, an English mile being two hun-
dred and seventeen yards shorter than a Scotch
mile, four hundred and eighty yards shorter
than an Irish mile, and the geographical mile
being another measure differing from all three.
Our very sailors do not mean the same thing
when they talk of fathoms. On board a man-of-
war it means six feet, on board a merchantman
five feet and a half, on board a fishing-vessel
five feet!

All this confusion runs some risk of being
confounded a little worse, if we are to have the
new measures with their outlandish nomenclature,
hectometres, centimetres, steres, and
myriagrammes, simply thrown into the mixture.
The schoolmaster's long names given by the
French to their weights and measures, never
shall be incorporated in the English language.
But the things represented by the names are a
rational necessity of commerce, and will surely
come with increasing civilisation into acceptance
throughout Europe. Foreign witnesses
before a parliamentary committee, agreed in
testifying that a nation which has adopted the
metrical system never wishes to use any other.
The immense convenience for the smallest
domestic, as well as the largest international,
use, is quickly felt and strongly appreciated.
Even in England it lias crept into service
among men and bodies of men who understood
and had opportunities for benefiting by its
handiness. Engineers and insurance companies
have in very many instances been using none
but a decimal system for their own purposes of
calculation. The Registrar-General uses it, and
it is about to be introduced into the statistical
department of the Board of Trade. It has been
in use in the Customs department for nearly
twenty years. It is also used in the Bank of
England. Professor Miller being asked how