Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/399

Rh longer than the average masculine foot. Both in England and on the continent legislation relating to standards of measurement was exceedingly lax, and in every important town the local magistrate developed or maintained his own municipal system of weights and measures. A comparison of nomenclature in different languages shows that the foot has been the generally selected unit of length; and the Latin word pondus meaning a weight, has been used with variations, such as pound and pfund, to express the popular unit of weight. With such unlimited local freedom, such imperfect means of communication, and such scanty diffusion of education, it is not remarkable that even so recently as a century ago the number of different units of length and weight, called by similar names, should be so great as almost to defy numeration. Even as late as 1850, in a 'Dictionary of Weights and Measures' at that time known, 5,227 of these were recorded. There were 135 varieties of foot; 60 of the inch; 29 of the pint; 53 of the mile, and 235 of the pound. The names foot and pound, or their equivalents in widely different languages, have been applied to magnitudes, nominally constant but practically variable, during the last 2,000 years. The Olympic foot, in use among the ancient Greeks, was traditionally derived from the foot of Hercules. To eradicate the popular devotion to these standards, variable as they may be, can not be accomplished in a generation. The range of variation among different values of the foot has been from 8.75 inches to 23.22 inches, or over 165 per cent.

Standards of weight and measure are thus the products of the people. The fundamental condition to be fulfilled is that a standard shall be definite and invariable. The function of legislation is not to create standards, but to adopt and protect them. This necessity was appreciated certainly as far back as the time of the Romans, but the recognition of it implies a degree of civilization that was not shared with them by the peoples they had nominally conquered. In England there is no record of such legislation prior to the thirteenth century. By statute of King Henry III., A. D. 1266, the combined standard of money, weight and capacity was defined by the statement that 'an English penny, called a sterling, round and without any clipping, shall weigh thirty-two wheat corns in the midst of the ear ; and twenty pence do make an ounce, and twelve ounces one pound, and eight pounds do make a gallon of wine, and eight gallons of wine do make a London bushel, which is the eighth part of a quarter. ' This pound, thus equal to the weight of 7,680 wheat grains, was known as the sterling or easterling pound, and had long been in use among the nations of eastern Europe. It is supposed to have been brought to England in the time of the Crusades. The troy pound and the avoirdupois pound additionally came into use, their origin and time of introduction being