Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/75

 iis.vLJuLY2o,i9i2.j NOTES AND QUERIES.

59,

on Books.

31 en and Measures. By Edward Nicholson.

(Smith, Elder & Co.)

THE seed of this book, the writer tells us, was a fifteenth-century record of English linear measures found by the late Dr. Furnivall in a Bodleian MS., and printed in The Academy in 1896. It is given on p. 77 of this volume. This was certainly a seed which fell on good ground, and aecordingly has branched out largely and borne good fruit ; for the work which is its outcome the product of many years' study and research is as com- prehensive as it is genial and pleasant to read, as clear in its tracing of the principles which underlie the evolution of metric systems as it is packed with well-selected detail.

Very little, we imagine, is known to the general reader of the history of those weights and measures with which every one is familiar ; still less, probably, of the inter-relation of the different measures, their evolution and involution, a subject upon which we found Col. Nicholson particularly interesting. On the one hand, we have the primitive limb - measurements the cubit, the span, the palm, and so on ; on the other, those measurements of the earth which, made first, apparently, in Chaldea thousands of years B.C., are as valid now as then, and furnish that meridian mile which seamen of all nations use at the present day. Between them come those measures of length, area, or capacity which correspond in different waya with the range of a day's work or a day's travel, or with the most convenient satisfaction of daily needs, and, again, those measures instituted, more or less arbitrarily, by rulers or governments to serve their own ends or to fit a theory.

Of these last the most conspicuous instance is t-he compulsory use of the metric system, with its accompanying decimalization, in many modern countries. Col. Nicholson points out that, in spite of police pressure, the use of this system is evaded wherever possible by the peasants and traders even of France, the country of its origin, and the reason of their dislike is not far to seek. In the buying and selling of small quantities, which makes the ordinary traffic of the mass of a population, weights, measures, and money reckoned by a number possessing so few factors as 10 is highly inconvenient ; nor do the metric units themselves correspond to those limb-units which have been universally adopted, and to which the people have always in the end reverted, whenever compelled by authority to make trial of others. The tendency has most often been to force upon them measures greater than they wanted, and the history of the foot the peasantry always revert to a short foot illustrates that well. Similarly instructive is the way in which again and again the people revert to the simple and convenient sexdecimal system of reckoning.

The first chapters of the book give a general survey of the subject, and then proceed to deal with the cubits and with the talents the original lalent being the weight of an Egyptian royal cubit of water divided into 3,000 shekels. In the Tollowing chapter Col. Nicholson discusses the interesting question of the origin of our English foot, inclining, out of three hypotheses, to favour that which derives it from the side of a

cubical vessel containing 1,000 Roman ounce? of water. He puts forward a like explanation ' for the Pan of Marseilles : it was the measure of the " pan " or panel of a cubical measure of capacity. Measures of capacity, while thus- furnishing the turning-point between the evolution and involution of measures, are again interesting for the way in which different countries solve the problem presented by the different specific weights of commodities.

The history of the English coinage under the early Tudors shows with what cynical falsehood and indifference to real needs a government not theoretically so despotic as many others have been may yet be found to act ; just as the history of the metric system shows how little scientific radically may be a system which has the super- ficial appearance of being strictly scientific.

One question, in bis discussion of decimaliza- tion, Col. Nicholson does not approach. Yet it would be interesting to know the views upon it of one who has entered so fully and sympa- thetically into the significance of weights and measures as part of human daily life in all times and all over the world, and has amassed so much information concerning them : we mean the use of the duodecimal, as opposed to the decimal,, hundred, which Herbert Spencer advocated.

Though, as a whole, Col. Nicholson thinks our- system of weights and measures a good one, he- has a few defects to point out, notably the- practical inconvenience of the system of multiples of the pound, of which his work, when weighing and recording the weights of recruits and soldiers, gave him immediate experience. His notes on the systems used in our Colonies and in India are concise and useful, and he has a good chapter- on the ' Measures and Weights of France,' and a not her. full of suggestive detail, on the ' Develop- ment of Meaning in Names of Measures.' Want of space forbids our quoting details. We- can but advise our readers, already through his contributions to our pages in Col. Nicholson's debt,, to increase alike that indebtedness and their fund, of curious information by making the acquaint- ance of this volume.

The Secret of the Pacific : a Discussion of the Origin of the Early Civilisations of America,- the Toltecs, Aztecs, Mayas, Incog, and their- Predecessors ; atid of the Possibilities of Asiatic- Influence thereon. By C. Reginald Enock.. With 56 Illustrations and 2 Maps. (Fisher Unwin.)

THK title of this deeply interesting work gives a fairly clear notion of its scope. The author describes the antiquities of the Pacific shores of America (North and South) from British Columbia to Peru, and gives an account of the various- theories which have been propounded as to their- origin. An engineer by profession, he could' hardly help being impressed by the gigantic remains of extinct civilizations in Arizona, Mexico,, and Peru ; and he has been driven by the interest they aroused in him to collect into one volume, and to attempt to co-ordinate, what is known or believed about them. ' The Secret of the Pacific ' is, then, the answer to the question, " Were the American civilizations autochthonous, or do they derive from Asiatic sources, and if so, which 'i " Mr. Enock does not attempt to solve the riddle ;: his whole book is a plea for a fuller study of the-