The Imperial Avoirdupois Pound is made of platinum, and is in the form of a cylinder nearly 1.35 inches in height, and 1.15 inches in diameter, with a groove or channel round it for insertion of the points of the ivory fork, by which it may lifted, and it is marked "P.S. 1844. 1 lb." Its form is shown in Fig. 3.

Avoirdupois is our principal weight, as the Act of 1878 requires all articles sold by weight to be sold by avoirdupois, excepting that gold and silver, and all precious metals or stones may be sold by the ounce, troy; and drugs when sold by retail may be sold by apothecaries' weight.

Upper Surface of Pound.

PS.1844.1.tb

Fig. 3.-PRESENT IMPERIAL STANDARD POUND.

Standard

The present unit of capacity for liquids as well as for Imperial dry goods is the Imperial gallon measure, introduced in measures 1824 in place of the old Winchester gallon.

of

capacity.

It is determined by a brass gallon measure (Fig. 4), which, like all standard measures below the gallon, has its diameter equal to its depth, and which contains ten Imperial pounds weight of distilled water weighed in air against brass weights, with the water and the air at the temperature of 62° Fahrenheit, and with the barometer at 30 inches. Captain Kater gives an account of the verification of this and other standards of capacity in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for 1826. The Imperial bushel, or 8 gallons, was verified in 1825, and is made of gun metal (Fig. 5), but, like the other dry measures, the half-bushel and peck, its diameter is double its depth, which proportion was originally selected as affording the truest measure for corn.

Brass gallon marked Imperial Standard Gallon Anno Domini MDCCCXXIV. Anno V.G.iv Regis."

As the Imperial gallon contains ten pounds weight of water, it can be taken that, throughout the British Empire, "A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter."

mentary

By the Act of 1878, the Parliamentary copies of the ParliaImperial Standards are required to be compared with each Standards. other once in every ten years; but those immured at the Houses of Parliament are only compared with the Imperial Standards once in every twenty years, and they were so last compared in 1892 as described in a report laid before Parliament (Commons Paper, No. 171 of 1892). The place where the immured standards are deposited is indicated by a brass plate on the right-hand side of the first landing-place on the steps leading up to the Committee Rooms of the House of Commons. At the proceedings with reference to the examination of the Parliamentary Standards on 2nd April 1892, at the Palace of Westminster, there were present the Right Hon. A. W. Peel, the Speaker; Sir Michael Hicks Beach, M.P., President of the Board of Trade; Sir H. G. Calcraft, Secretary of the Board of Trade; the Right Hon. D. Plunket, First Commissioner of Her Majesty's Works;

Colonel W. Carrington representing the Lord Great
Chamberlain, and Mr. H. J. Chaney, Superintendent of
Weights and Measures.

Standards

of Henry

2. ANCIENT STANDARDS.

The ancient standard of linear measure appears to VII. and have been re-established in 1324 by Statute of Edward II. Queen Elizabeth. (17 Edward II.), which ordained that three barley-corns, round and dry, make an inch, 12 inches a foot, three feet a yard, or ulnam (First Report Commissioners of Weights and Measures, 1819).

By other statutes and decrees, particularly the Statute 31, Edward 1, 1303 (Tractatus de Ponderibus et Mensuris; see also Statute of 25 Edward 1 Magna Carta, c. 25), provision had been made for maintaining uniformity of measure. The Statute of 1303 appears

to be the first in which the unit of linear measure was particularly referred to.

In the reign of Henry VII. several Statutes were passed relating to uniformity of measure (1491, 7 Henry VII.; 1495, 11 Henry VII.; 1496-7, 12 Henry VII.).

The standard yard of 36 inches (1496) still exists, and is probably of the same length as the old Saxon yard.

This ancient standard is a bronze rod, the length of the yard being the distance between the ends of the rod, and it was in constant use for the verification of other yards until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when a new standard was made (1588), which measure is also at the Standards Office (see Descriptive List of ancient standards. Paper presented to Parliament by Command. C.-6541. 1892.)

The standard bushel of Henry VII. (1495) is shown in Fig. 6.

With reference to the Winchester bushel (Henry VII.), it may be interesting to note that although the ancient Winchester bushel is now illegal in trade, its use for fixing corn rents is not obsolete. For instance, in Lincolnshire, three arbitrators were appointed in 1885 by the justices to ascertain the average price of a Winchester bushel of good marketable wheat for the past 21 years, to form the basis for re-ascertaining the corn rents for the next 21 years.

Three separate gallon measures had been in use as follows from ancient times (two of them probably from 1225) until 1824, when, by the passing of the Act, 5 Geo. 4. c. 74, the present imperial gallon, then containing 277.274 cubic inches, was introduced, and the use of the three ancient gallon measures was made illegal.