The Hastings Standard Published Daily. FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1896. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

Hastings Standard, Issue 106, 28 August 1896, Page 2

The Hastings Standard Published Daily.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1896. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrongs that need resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Spasmodic efforts have been made at various times to graft the metric system upon the British, but stolid John Bull prefers bis own peculiar systems to the lengthy and ponderous metric system, which, in spite of the claims to being scientific set up by its many advocates, is proved to be devoid of a single scientific feature. The British nation will never take kindly to the metric system, and yet the complications of the weights and measures that obtain in Great Britain should be simplified, and pould be if the matter was taken in hand.

The intricacies of the British system are not generally known. Weights and measures vary with each trade, and are the results of peculiar customs that have been handed down to us from past ages. 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 of train oil, and eight pounds for some other oils. A pipe of wine means 93 gallons if the wine be Marsala, 92 if Madeira, 117 if Bucellas, 108 if Port, and 100 if Teneriffe. A stone is 141b of a living man, 8 of a slaughtered bullock, 16 of cheese, 5 of glass, 32 of hemp, 16f of flax at Belfast, 24 of flax at Downpatrick. It is 141b of wool as sold by the growers and 151b of wool as sold by the woolstaplers to each other. There are seven measures in use to define an acre. A hundredweight may contain 1001b, 1121b., or a 1201b. The English mile is 217 yards shorter than a Scottish mile and 480 yards shorter than an Irish mile, and the geographical mile differs from all three. Sailors do not mean the same thing when they talk of fathoms. On board a man-of-war it means 6ft, on beard a merchantman s§ft, and on board a fishing vessel sft. Then we have a baker's dozen, which differs from the schoolboy's dozen. This variegated system can be very much simplified if it is possible to break through the custom and usage of years. It will take many years to make such a breach, but when a change is made it will be the metric system that will be adopted.