I. The Story of Averdepois

The story of our Imperial system has hitherto been utterly obscure. The origin of our foot, our gallon, our pound, indeed of all our measures, was quite unknown. That of the pound, which gives the key to the whole system, had been obscured by statutes which ignored any but the royal pound used at the mints. Yet these statutes, often purposely obscure, can be made to show the hidden sources of our system.

Our pound, settled at its present Imperial standard in the time of Queen Elizabeth, was then found to have risen slightly since the time of Edward III. It was found to have increased by about 8 grains. The ounce, now = 437-1/2 grains, had been 437 grains, the same weight as the ounce of Egypto-Roman pound, the Roman libra.^[22] There is every reason to believe that this Roman standard passed to Britain, and that the libra, raised to 16 ounces, became the commercial pound, afterwards known as Averdepois, and now the Imperial pound.

When the Romans took the Alexandrian talent as the standard of their new libra-system, they divided it into 125 librÆ, which were 1500 ounces or double-shekels, each ounce = 437 grains.

When the Arab Caliphs conquered the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries, they found in Egypt the Egypto-Roman pound, 1/125 of the Alexandrian talent; they adopted it, and divided it for coin-weight purposes into 72 mithkals, just as the Roman Emperors had divided the old As pound into 72 aurei; so 6 mithkals = the libra-ounce of 437 grains, just as 6 aurei = the As-ounce of 420-2/3 grains. It is not improbable that the survival of the Roman commercial pound in Saxon England was strengthened by commercial and scientific relations with the Moors of Spain. King Offa of Mercia struck a gold coin with an Arabic inscription, dated 157 of the Hejira = A.D. 774.

However this may have been, there seems no doubt that the Roman pound, raised to 16 ounces, was the standard of England before as after the Norman conquest, and there is no evidence of it having ever been in abeyance. In early Plantagenet times there was a sexdecimal series of weights:

The Stone of 16 lb.

The Wey of 16 stone = 256 lb.

There was also the Hundredweight, of which 20 made a ton of 2000 lb.; and 20 weys made a Last of approximately 5120 lb. or 2-1/2 tons.

The pound was divided into 16 ounces, each = 437 grains, and the ounce into 16 drams or drops = 27·3 grains.

Both before and after the Conquest there was another pound used in the mints, like the As in Rome. It was of Tower, or Cologne-marc, standard. There were doubtless many local variations of commercial standard, especially in measures of capacity, and it was the necessity of checking these which made King John and his successors declare that ‘there should be one standard throughout our kingdom, whether in weights or in measures.’

But the king had a mint-pound of his own, and he had to reconcile the existence of the coinage-pound and of the commercial pound with the customary declaration of unity of weight made in each reign. The king’s councillors evaded the difficulty by pretending that the measures of capacity were based on the mint-pound and, in statutes where a commercial pound had to be mentioned, by pretending that this was equal to 25 shillings weight or 15 ounces of the mint-pound. This deception led to others, so that, to make out the meaning of a statute of weights and measures, one must be able to read between the lines, and to be prepared for misleading and contradictory statements. I will take as an instance, Act 51 Henry III (1267):

An English peny called a Sterling, round and without clipping, shall weigh 32 wheat corns in the midst of the ear; and 20 d. do make an Ounce, and 12 Ounces one Pound, and 8 Pounds do make a gallon of wine and 8 gallons of wine do make a London Bushel which is the eighth part of a Quarter.

This declaration may be thus interpreted:

In the Tower there is a standard pound. An English silver penny should weigh 1/240 of this pound and 1/20 of its ounce, and the penny-weight may be divided into 32 aces or little grains. But there is another old-established pound used for all goods but gold and silver, bread and drugs. Our regard for the unity of weight forbids us to describe this pound otherwise than by mentioning that a wine-gallon contains 8 of these pounds weight of wine or of water, that 8 larger gallons each containing 8 pounds, not of wine, but of wheat, make a Bushel; and that 8 of these bushels make a quarter of a Chaldron containing a ton or 2000 lb. of wheat.

That this is correct is easily proved.

The Bushel is 1/8 of the Quarter, which was the quarter of a chaldron, the measure of a ton of 20 true hundredweight. The quarter was 500 lb. of average wheat, and the bushel weighed 500/8 = 62-1/2 averdepois lb. of wheat or, in wheat-water ratio, 78 lb. of wine or of water, the specific gravity of which differs but little. But 8 × 8 Tower lb. of wine = (5400 grs. × 8 × 8)/7000 = 49·4 averdepois lb. or, to be quite accurate, 49·5 lb. of early Plantagenet averdepois weight, when the ounce was of Roman standard, 437 grains; how then could the bushel = 78 lb. of wine, be the measure of 49·5 lb. of wine?

That there were two different gallons, the one for wine, the other for corn, is shown in the Ordinance 31 Edw. III, where it is ordered that ‘8 lb. of wheat shall make a gallon.’ It is true that this is continued by ‘the lb. shall contain 20 s.’; but very soon after the ordinance states that, for everything except groceries, each lb. shall be of 25 s., and we know that the 25 s. was merely a subterfuge to show the averdepois pound as 15 ounces Tower, afterwards 15 ounces Troy, neither of which it ever was: we may therefore dismiss this statement, and recognise that the wine-gallon held approximately 8 averdepois lb. of wine, and that the corn gallon, about one-fourth larger, held 8 averdepois lb. of wheat.

Further evidence is to be found in 12 Henry VII (1496).

This statute, after the usual preamble about ‘one weight and one measure,’ orders:

That the measure of a Bushel contain 8 gallons of wheat, and that every Gallon contain 8 lb. of wheat of Troy weight, and every Pound contain 12 ounces of Troy weight, and every Ounce contain 20 sterlings and every Sterling be of the weight of 32 Corns of wheat that grew in the midst of the ear of wheat according to the old law of the land.

While the bushel is now described as containing 8 gallons of wheat and each gallon 8 pounds of wheat, the old fiction is kept up that these are royal pounds. Only these pounds are now Troy, of 5760 grains, instead of Tower, of 5400 grains; 64 Troy pounds were equal to 52-2/3 lb. averdepois, a weight still far from the 62-1/2 lb. averdepois of wheat contained in the extant bushel-measure of Henry VII. And though the mints were coining 420, instead of 240, pennies from the 5760 grain-pound of silver, so that these were little more than half the weight of Henry III’s pennies, yet they were still of the weight of 32 wheat-corns.

The substance of this statute was embodied in a State-document adorned with a picture of the King’s Steward presiding over the gauging of bushels and weighing of wheat-corns, surmounted by a picture of two entwined wheat-ears with the inscription:

The whete eare. Two graynes maketh the xvi p^te. of a penny, ffower graynes maketh the viij p^te. of a penny.

After this impudent assertion one is not surprised to read that it was ‘the same tyme ordeired that xvi uncs of Troie maketh the Haberty poie a pounde for to buy spice^[23] by,’ nor by the statement that ‘the C is true at this daye, ffyve score for the hundred as appeareth in Magna Carta.’

Comment on these ingenious statements seems hardly necessary.

The only changes in English weights since the time of Henry III, or indeed much earlier times, have been:

1. The raising of the hundredweight to 112 lb.

2. The lowering of the stone from 16 lb. to 14 lb. to make it one-eighth of the new hundredweight.

3. The rise of the averdepois pound from 16 Roman ounces of 437 grains to 16 ounces of 437-1/2 grains; a difference of 8 grains, so as to make it 7000 grains of the Tudor Troy pound.

4. The re-legalising of the 100 lb. or cental weight in 1879.

I may observe that the octonary series of measures of capacity, also of the 14 lb. stone and new Cwt., is quite in harmony with the sexdecimal system, however objectionable be those units.

The Recognition of Averdepois Weight

It is not until 1485 (Ripon Ch. Acts, quoted in the ‘New English Dictionary’) that we find mention of averdepois, though there had been standard weights of it from temp. Edw. III, ‘per balance cum ponderibus de haberdepase,’ and those standards were extant in the time of Elizabeth.

The document embodying 12 Henry VII (1496) mentions, as has been seen, the Habertypoie pound, with the assertion that it was 16 Troy ounces, an assertion causing confusion for centuries afterwards.

In Arnold’s ‘Customs of London,’ c. 1500, there is mentioned ‘the Lyggynge Weyght, by which is boughte and solde all maner of marchaundise as tynne, ledde ... and al maner of specery ... and such other as is used to be solde by weyght; and of this weyght xvj uncis make a pound, and C and xij li. is an C, and x C make a M of all suche marchaundises ... except wulle.’

This ‘lying weight’ was by the balance, the weight lying in one scale, and not hanging or sliding on the beam of a stilyard as in Auncell weight. The stilyard, very portable, as not requiring heavy weights, yet admitted of fraud. Arnold says ‘this weight is forboden in England by statute of parlement, and also holy church hath cursed in England all that beyen or sellen by that auncel weyght.’

In 1532 it was ordered by 24 Henry VIII that meat ‘shall be sold by weight called Haver-du-pois,’ and in 1543 Recorde (‘Ground of Artes’) says, ‘But commenly there is used an other weyght called haberdyepoyse in which 16 onces make a pounde.’

In 1545 the Custom-House notified that ‘thys lyinge and Habardy peyse is all one.’

Having cleared away, as I hope, the obscurity which so long hung over the commercial weight ignored by the statutes, it may be well to mention that ‘Averdepois’ is the best spelling of this word, and is so accepted by the ‘New English Dictionary.’ ‘Aver’ is an old-established English word for ‘goods,’ and the earlier form ‘Haberdepase’ shows the original pronunciation. The spelling of the last syllable in ‘Averdepois’ is a sufficient concession to an incorrect modern custom.

The term originally applied to heavy goods, such as came from beyond sea; if the word was sometimes spelt, as in 25 Edw. III, ‘bledz, avoirdepois, chars, pessons’ (corn, heavy goods, meat, fish), it does not follow that the oi diphthong was pronounced as in ‘boy.’ The word pessons, now written poissons, shows the sound-value of the diphthong. The sound now given to it in modern French is a corruption. Up till 1700, even in Paris, oi was pronounced É or wÉ. ‘Averdepez’ is the true pronunciation. However, the influence of ‘poise’ prevents any improvement on the word being written and pronounced as ‘Averdepois.’

Though measures of capacity had always been on an averdepois basis, the admission of averdepois weight to statute recognition only dates from the time of Elizabeth. In her reign light begins to appear in our system of weights and measures. In 1574 she ordered a jury to examine the standard weights (many of Edward III and succeeding kings), to report on them, and to construct standards ‘as well of troy weight as of the avoirdupois.’

The standards made by this jury were as unsatisfactory as their report. Little could be expected from persons who could, with Edward III’s standard weights before them, report that ‘the lb. weight of avoirdepoiz weight dothe consiste of fiftene ounc troie.’ This was in accordance with the old fiction that the averdepois pound must be a commercial offshoot of the royal pound, that it was 15 ounces Tower = 6750 grains, and afterwards in Tudor times 15 ounces Troy = 7200 grains, or even 16 ounces Troy = 7680 grains.

Elizabeth and her advisers were not deceived by this obsequious report, so, the standards made being found very erroneous, in 1582 a second and more intelligent jury of goldsmiths and merchants was appointed, and the result of their work was the production of 57 sets of standard Troy and averdepois weights, which were distributed to the Exchequer, to cities and towns. Some of these averdepois weights are still extant and do not now differ by more than one grain in each pound from Imperial standard.

The Proclamation for Weights of December 16, 1587, established averdepois weight, and ordered that ‘no person shall use any Troy weight but only for weighing of bread, gold, silver and electuaries and for no other thing.’

It seems probable that, in the two centuries before Elizabeth, the standard of the commercial pound had risen by about 8 grains. This may have occurred when the Troy pound superseded the Tower pound. In the adjustment, which I assume as probable, of the Troy and Averdepois pounds so as to obtain a ratio of 5760 to 7000, the latter standard, raising the ounce from 437 to 437-1/2 grains, and the pound by 8 grains, may have been adopted so as to avoid or diminish the cutting down of the new Troy pound.

Thus was established by Elizabeth the English standard of weight. Excellent standards of capacity and of length were also made; and she established our silver coinage on its present basis.

And yet, well into the nineteenth century, even into the twentieth, went on the puzzledom of our weights and measures, left to arithmetic book and almanack makers blinded by the glamour of the royal pound.

No official utterance came to clear the darkness, for it was not till 1855 that the pound, then established as an Imperial standard, was really defined.

2. The Imperial Pound

It is the weight in vacuo of a certain piece of platinum kept in London. It is divided into 16 ounces, approximately Roman ounces. The ounce may be divided into 16 drams.

The pound is also divided into 7000 grains, the ounce being 437-1/2 grains.

It may be well to anticipate or remove any uncertainty about the grain. The averdepois pound was only divided into ounces and drams (just as the yard is only divided, as a yard, into quarters and nails), but on its adjustment with the troy pound as = 7000 grains of which the latter = 5760, it became divisible into grains. These were long called Troy grains, in consequence of the superstition about the noble Troy weight. This word seems to have paralysed the intelligence of many persons doubtless sensible enough in other matters; thus Rees’ ‘CyclopÆdia’ (1819) informed its readers that ‘the pound or 7680 grains avoirdupois equals 7000 grains troy, and hence 1 grain troy equals 1·097 avoirdupois.’

The weight of the standard pound in a vacuum (that is, its weight not diminished by the buoyancy of the air) being 7000 grains, a commercial brass pound exactly equal to the platinum standard when weighed against it in air at 62°, would weigh 7000·6 grains in a vacuum.

The Dram

This, 1/16 of an ounce = 27-1/3 grains, is principally used as a unit for powder in the cartridges of sporting guns. In Scotland it was called a ‘drop.’

1673. A quech weighing 18 unce and 10 drop.

1805. An arrow of from 20 to 24 drop weight (‘N.E.D.’).

The dram was possibly so called from its corresponding to the quentchen, 1/8 of the German Loth or half-ounce (1/16 of a marc) as the drachm was 1/8 of a medicinal ounce.^[24] Or it may merely have been called a dram as being the part of the ounce, in the same way that the drachm was the next lower part of the apothecaries’ ounce.

3. Scientific and Medicinal Divisions of the Pound

For scientific purposes the pound is considered as of 7000 grains. It may be divided into tenths, hundredths, thousandths; this last division being called a Septem, as = 7 grains. The tenth of this might be called a Septula = 0·7 grain, and the hundredth a Septicent = 0·07 grain. This small weight would be one 100,000th of the gallon, the same proportion as the centigramme to the litre. In analyses of water the solid constituents are usually stated in centigrammes to the litre, or parts in 100,000; and as grains to the gallon or parts in 70,000 they have to be divided by 0·7 to get that ratio. Septicents to the gallon would be the English equivalent of centigrammes to the litre.

An Apothecaries’ Troy ounce lingers in the Board of Trade list of standards, for a permissive use utterly unrequired by medical prescribers or by druggists; the British Pharmacopoeia only recognising Imperial weight, the ounce and the grain. For convenience, a weight of 60 grains is called a Drachm, and one of 20 grains is called a Scruple. It is most rare for prescriptions to contain an ounce of any solid medicine; and when an ounce of such a medicine is most exceptionally prescribed, it might be an Imperial ounce, just as ounces of fluid medicines prescribed are Imperial ounces.

4. The Long Hundredweight

The multiples of the pound were originally, like its divisions, in a sexdecimal series, with an alternative series to bring in the hundredweight, i.e. the true Cwt.

The approximative relation of the quarter, strictly speaking of 512 lb., mattered but little, as it applied to corn-measure, in which the measured quarter, 8 bushels, varied from 500 lb. for wheat of 62-1/2 lb. to the bushel, to 512 lb. for heavy wheat of 64 lb. to the bushel. The arrangement was convenient for the corn-trade and could not give rise to fraud; and the main object of all laws on weights and measures should be to prevent fraud, especially in retail trade.

This convenient arrangement was altered in the times of Edward I and Edward III. The former King found the Cwt. of 100 lb. with a quarter of 25 lb. and a sixteenth = 6-1/4 lb. as its nail or clove. In his Acts there is mention of the 100 weight, the 1000 weight, the 2000 weight. But by the Ordinance of Measures 31 Edw. I, 1302, a distractingly obscure statute, no less than three different weights are ordered for the stone:

A stone for lead of 12 lb.

A London stone of 12-1/2 lb., one-eighth of the true Cwt.

A stone for groceries of 8 lb.; and 13-1/2 stone to make a Cwt. of 108 lb.

And the ‘fotmal’ of lead is to be 6 stones of 12 lb. but less 2 lb., ‘which are 70 lb. making 5 stones.’

Here then we see, besides a 12 lb. stone for lead,

(a) The true Cwt. of 100 lb. divided into quarters and nails.

(b) A transitional Cwt. of 108 lb. in 13-1/2 old half-stones of 8 lb.

(c) A new Cwt. of 112 lb. in 8 stones of 14 lb.

The Cwt. (centena) of 108 lb. seems to have been preparatory to the Cwt. of 112 lb. mentioned in this Ordinance (if it be not a later interpolation) and established later by Edward III. It preserved, for a time, the ancient half-stone of 8 lb., but by the inconvenient process of making 13-1/2 of these as the Cwt.; probably to prepare the merchant for a new Cwt. of 112 lb. first in 14 stones of 8 lb. and then in 8 stones of 14 lb.

This is the Cwt. which has come down from Edward III to the present day, against which trade has had to struggle more or less successfully ever since, and which torments the schoolboy with sums in tons, cwts., qrs. and lb.

To this day the old Stone of 16 lb. or its half, the Clove of 8 lb., still continues in use. The butcher’s and fishmonger’s stone is 8 lb., and cheese is sold, in most parts of England, by the 16 lb. stone, as it was five or six centuries ago. In 1434, by 9 Henry VI, it was ordered that the Wey of cheese should contain 32 cloves, yet we learn from Arnold (1500) that the weight of Suffolk Cheese is xij score and xvj lb., the same weight as the wey (16 × 16 = 256 lb.), and Recorde (1543) says that for butter and cheese ‘a clove containeth 8 lb. and a wey 32 cloves which is 256 lb.’ By 10 Anne (1712) a barrel of soap is to contain 256 lb., i.e. a Wey.

The Plantagenet 14 lb. stone is used for flour and potatoes, &c., but the load, the modern form of the wey, is 18 stone of 14 lb. = 252 lb., evidently an approximately near substitute for the 16 × 16 lb. = 256 lb. of the Wey, there being until quite recently no lawful weights allowed above 7 lb. but in multiples of that weight. The load, like the wey, has the advantage of being equal to 4 bushels of heavy corn at 63 lb., so that it is half of the Quarter and an eighth of the wheat-chaldron or ton-measure.

What was the reason for the Plantagenet Cwt.? for the inconvenient unit, rightly rejected by our brethren in North America, and in several colonies?

Edward I’s intermediate Cwt. of 108 lb. seems to show that it was intended to bring our Cwt. up to that of foreign countries using Troy pounds, 108 lb. being very close to the French and Flemish quintal (Arabic cantar) of 100 Troy lb. The wool-trade with Flanders, the dominion of the Plantagenets in France, may have been the motives for this increase.

The hypothesis that the Cwt. was made 112 lb. so as to be equal to 100 long Troy lb. of 16 Troy ounces, is excluded by the ratio of averdepois to long troy being 100 to 109·7 and also by the new Cwt. dating at least from the time of Edward III, when the royal lb. was still Tower, not Troy, with a ratio to averdepois of 100 to 128; and it was certainly not of 16 ounces.

The only lawful multiples of the Imperial pound were, until quite recently, those of the stone series:

And the only lawful weights were those of 56, 28, 14, 7, 4, 2, and 1 lb.

I have had some personal experience of the inconvenience of these weights. For years I had to weigh recruits and other soldiers, recording their weights in pounds with this inconvenient set of weights. To get the weight of a man of 152 lb. I had to reckon 2 × 56 lb. + 28 + 7 + 4 + 1 lb. Errors were necessarily frequent when many weighings had to be rapidly done, so I had a set of decimal weights made—20, 10, 5 lb.—and all trouble ceased. But these weights were not lawful, at least for trade purposes.

There was, however, another lawful unit, the Cental, that is, the original English Cwt., brought back to England from North America by the corn-trade. Commerce demanded the recognition of the Cental and got it in 1879.

In 1902, the tobacco-trade in Liverpool, annoyed at the inconvenience of the lawful units of weight, as inconvenient for the wholesale tobacco-warehouse as for my military purposes, moved the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce to get the Board of Trade to allow them to use a half-cental weight; a whole cental, the only lawful unit of the kind, being too heavy for handling. In reply to this request, it was suggested that a nest of weights, 28 + 14 + 7 + 1 lb. = 50 lb. might be used. To this the tobacco-trade objected, and after correspondence, the use of a 50 lb. weight was granted. Then they requested permission to use smaller fractions of the cental, in fact a decimal series of 20, 10, 5 lb. And they obtained it. So, thanks to the perseverance of the Liverpool tobacco-merchants and Chamber of Commerce, the decimal fractions of the Cental are now lawful weights, and no one need use the inconvenient 14 lb. stone series.

5. Wool and Lead Weight

Wool Weight

The revenue of the Plantagenet kings being largely derived from duties on the export of wool, the weight of the sack was fixed by statute. By 31 Edw. I ‘the sack of wool ought to weigh 28 stone of 12-1/2 lb.’ = 350 lb. By 14 Edw. III ‘the sack shall contain 26 stone and each stone 14 lb.’ = 364 lb., i.e. 2 weys of 13 stone. This regulation was supported by other statutes, in 1389 and 1496, and appears to have had due effect, for it is the standard at the present time: 26 stone or 13 ‘tods.’

Why was this particular weight ordered?

Possibly because the sack thus corresponded nearly to the skippund (ship-pound) of the Baltic trade and of Scotland, a weight of 20 lispund each of 16 Norse Troy pounds or of 20 pounds of light standard = 352 to 375 lb. The Baltic skippund at the present day is about 350 lb.

In Scotland the sack of wool was ordered to be 24 stone, which was equivalent to 26 English stone, in proportion to the heavier weight of the Scots pound.

The Plantagenet domination in France caused the stone to pass there, though not always at English weight; and there being no regular weight in France between the pound and the quintal, local stones came into use. ‘Les laines vend on par sacs et par pois, par pierres, par claus et par livres,’ the French terms for the sack, the wey, the stone, the clove and the pound.^[25] Sometimes the stone was called ‘gal’ (stone, galet, shingle) and the clove ‘demi-gal’ (Livre blanc de l’hotel de ville d’Abbeville). The French stone was of variable weight. One record gives the sack of wool (= 4 Montpellier light quintals) as of 25 pierres, which would make them 9 lb. each. Another record gives it as 36 stone of 9 standard pounds (= 10 English pounds).

The stone appears to be extinct now in France; I find that as late as 1579 wool was sold in Burgundy by the wool-stone (la pierre de laine) = 12 French or about 13 English pounds.

While the old English wey or load was 16 × 16 = 256 lb., the wey ordered for wool was half a sack = 182 lb. It would seem that, once the King’s dues paid, the shipper was free to make up his sacks or sarplers of wool as most convenient to him. The customary wey or weigh (Sc. waugh or wall) seems to have been 32 cloves or nails of 7 lb. = 2 cwt. A ‘poke’ of wool ‘weand 4 C. 15 nallis,’ i.e. 4 cwt. and 105 lb. A sack might be ‘6 wall and 25 naill,’ i.e. 12 cwt. and 175 lb.

The wey or weigh became, in statute French, poids, pois; but the scribes took the wrong pois and thinking it meant ‘pease’ made it pisa in their Latin, just as they took the wrong ‘nail’ and made it L. clavus, and in French clau, through L. clavis, meaning a ‘key.’

Lead Weight

While the fother is 17-2/3 cwt. for coal, it is 19-1/2 cwt. = 2184 lb. for lead. This peculiar unit, also called the char or load, is the consequence of a statute 31 Edw. I, perhaps the most confused and bewildering of the many confused medieval statutes on weights and measures, and one in which subsequent interpolations may be suspected. It ordered two stones, one of 12 lb. and another of 12-1/2 lb., and to keep up the pretence of there being no weight other than of Tower standard, it declared that a pound shall contain 25 shillings. This shilling standard may be put aside.

The 12 lb. stone is ordered apparently either as a double of a customary ‘lead-pound’ of 6 lb. or to make the customary fotmal or ‘pig’ of lead, 70 lb. weight, ‘contain 6 stones (of 12 lb.) less 2 lb.’ It also says that the deduction of 2 lb. leaves ‘70 lb. making 5 stones.’ This passage appears to be a subsequent interpolation after the institution of Edward III’s 14 lb. stone.

The fother of lead, of 30 fotmals, would thus be = 2100 lb. But the stone of 12-1/2 lb., evidently intended to be 1/8 of the true hundredweight, and to pave the way for the coming 14 lb. stone, is also applied to lead. How it is not said; but the present fother, = 2184 lb., is almost exactly equal to 30 fotmal, each of 73 lb. = 2190 lb.; and 73 lb. is just 6 stone of 12-1/2 lb. less 2 lb.

The 70 lb. fotmal seems to have disappeared by the seventeenth century, but in the meantime the uncertainty of the fother led to the use of Boole-weight, meaning the weight used at the lead-boles or natural bowls in which lead ore was smelted. The fother, boole-weight, was 30 fotmals of 6 stone of 14 lb. Sometimes it was of 24 fotmals = 2016 lb., that is 18 cwt.

The meaning of Fother is given in Chapter XX.

6. Trade-units of Weight

It is unnecessary to describe or even name the various weights peculiar to trade or local custom. Everyone in the trade knows them; out of it no one need know them. If a person not in the trade buys a cask of wine, a barrel of beer, a sack of flour or a load of potatoes, commonsense prompts him to ask how many gallons or pounds are contained in these units. It is the same in France and other countries of the metric system, where the cask, the sack, the churnful, &c., are trade-units with their peculiar equivalents of litres or kilogrammes. It is indeed by the use of trade-units that manufacturers evade the rigour of the metric system.