diminution of each degree of latitude, in the movement from the north to the equator; but the same testimony revealed the new and unexpected fact, that the diminution was not regular and gradual, but very considerably different at different stages of the progress in the same direction; from which the inference seems conclusive, that the earth is no more in its breadth than in its length, perfectly spherical, and that the northern and southern hemispheres are not of dimensions precisely equal.

The other discovery was not less remarkable. The object to be ascertained was the specific gravity of a given mass of water in vacuo, and at its maximum of density; that is, at the temperature where it weighs most in the smallest space. That fluids are subject to the general laws of expansion and contraction from heat and cold, was the principle upon which the experiments were commenced. It was also known that, in the transition of fluids to a solid state, the reverse of this phenomenon occurs, and that water, in turning to ice, instead of contracting, expands. It had been supposed that the freezing point was that at which this polarity of heat and cold, if it may be so called, was inverted, and that water, contracting as it cooled until then, began at once to freeze and to expand. The discovery made by Lefevre Gineau, and Fabbroni, was, that the change took place at an earlier period; that water contracts as it cools, till at five degrees above 0 of the centigrade, answering to forty-one of Fahrenheit's thermometer, and, from that term, gradually expands as it grows cold, till fixed in ice at 0 of the former, or thirty-two degrees of the latter.

In the admeasurement of the arc of the meridian, and in the weighing of the given volume of water, the standard measure and weights, previously established by the laws of France, were necessarily used. The identical measure was a toise or fathom belonging to the Academy of Sciences, which had been used for the admeasurement of several degrees of the meridian between the years 1737, and 1741, in Peru, and had thence acquired the denomination of the Toise du Perou. In 1766 it had served as the standard from which eighty others had been copied, and sent to the principal bailiwicks in France, and to the chatelet at Paris. The instruments used by Delambre and Mechain, for their mensurations, were two platina rods, each of double the length of this fathom of Peru. A repeating circle, a levelling instrument, and a metallic thermometer, consisting of two blades, one of brass, and the other of platina, and calculated to show the difference of expansion produced upon the two metals by the ordinary alternations of heat and cold in the atmosphere, all invented by the ingenious and skilful artist Borda, were also among the instruments used by the commissioners.

The weights with which the new standard was compared, were a pile of fifty marks, or twenty-five Paris pounds, called the weights of Charlemagne, and which, though not of the antiquity of that prince's age, had been used as standards for a period of more than five hundred years.

The fathom of Peru was divided into six standard royal feet of France, each foot into twelve thumbs, each thumb into twelve lines. The toise, therefore, was of seventy-two thumbs, or 864 lines. The standard metre of platina, the ten millionth part of the quarter of the meridian, measured by the brass fathom of Peru, was found to be equal to 443 lines, and 295,956 decimal parts of a line: and as it was found impossible to fix in the concrete form a division smaller than the thousandth part of a line, the definitive length of the metre was fixed at 443,296 lines, equivalent, by subsequent experiments of the academy, to 39.3827 English inches; by the latest experiments of captain Kater to 39.37079; and by those of Mr. Hassler, in this country, to 39.3802.

The Paris pound, mark-weight as it was called, (poids de marc,) of the pile of Charlemagne, consisted of two marks, each mark of eight ounces, each ounce of eight gros or drams, each gros of three deniers or pennyweights, and each denier of twenty-four grains. The pound, therefore, consisted of 9,216 grains, and was fequal to fifteen ounces and fifteen penny weights, or 7,560 grains troy. The grain was rather more than four-fifths of the troy grain, and had probably, in the origin, been equivalent to the kernel of wheat, which the troy grain could scarcely have been. The cubic decimetre, or tenth part of the metre, of distilled water, at the temperature of its greatest density, weighed in vacuo, was found of equal weight with 18.827 grains of a grain; or two pounds, five gros, thirty-five grains of the mark weight: and this, by the name of the kilogramme was made the standard weight, its thousandth part being the gramme, or unit, equivalent to 15.44572 grains troy, or about two and one-fifth pounds avoirdupois.

15

The capacity of the vessel containing this water was at the same time made the standard of all measures, liquid or dry: it was called a litre, and is of the contents of 61.0271 cubic inches, about onetwentieth more than our wine quart. The metre was applied to superficial and solid measures, according to their proportions: the chain of ten metres being applied to land measure, and its square denominated an arc; the cubic metre was called a stere.

The principle of decimal arithmetic was applied exclusively to all these weights and measures: their multiples were all tenfold, and their subdivisions were all tenth parts.

To complete the system, a vocabulary of new denominations was annexed to every weight and measure belonging to it. As a circumstance of great importance to the final success of the system, it may be remarked that these two incidents, the exclusive adoption of decimal divisions, and the new nomenclature, have proved the greatest obstacles to the general introduction of the new weights and measures among the people.

It has indeed from its origin, like all great undertakings, been obliged to contend with the intemperate zeal and precipitation of its friends, not less than with prejudice, ignorance, and jealousy, of every description. The admeasurement of the meridian was commenced

at the very moment of the fanatical paroxysm of the French revolution. At every station of their progress in the field survey, the commissioners were arrested by the suspicions and alarms of the people, who took them for spies, or engineers of the invading enemies of France. The government was soon overthrowu; the Academy of Sciences abolished; and the national assembly of the first constitutional monarchy, just at the eve of their dissolution, instead of waiting calmly for the completion of the great work which was to lay the foundation for a system to be as lasting as the globe, in a fit of impatience passed, on the 1st of August, 1793, a law declaring that the system should go immediately into operation, and assuming for the length of the standard metre the ten millionth part of the quadrant of the meridian according to the result of the old admeasurement of a degree in 1740, and arranging an entire system of weights and measures, in decimal divisions, with new denominations, all of which were to be merely temporary, and to cease when the definitive length of the metre should be ascertained. This extraordinary act was probably intended, as it directly tended, to prevent the further prosecution of the original plan: and though, soon after, it was followed by a decree of 11th September, 1793, authorizing the temporary continuance of the general committee of weights and measures, which had been appointed by the academy, yet, on the 23d December of the same year, a decree of Robespierre's committee of public safety dismissed from the commission Borda, Lavoisier, Laplace, Coulomb, Brisson, and Delambre, on the pretence that they were not republicans sufficiently pure. Mechain escaped the same proscription only because he was detained as a prisoner in Spain.

Yet even Robespierre and his committee were ambitious, not only of establishing the system of new weights and measures in France, but of offering them to the adoption of other nations. By a decree of that committee of 11th December, 1793, the board or commission of weights and measures were directed to send to the United States of America a metre in copper and a weight, being copies of the standards then just adopted. They were accordingly transmitted: and on the 2d of August, 1794, the two standards were, by the then French minister plenipotentiary Fauchet, sent to the Secretary of State, with a letter, recommending, with some urgency, the adoption of the system by the United States. This letter was communicated to Congress by a message from the President of the United States, of the 8th of January, 1795.

In the mean time the mensuration of the arc of the meridian was entirely suspended by the dismissal of Delambre, and the detention of Mechain. Its progress was renewed by a decree of the national convention of 7th April, 1795, (18 Germinal, An. 3) which abolished almost entirely the nomenclature of the temporary standards adopted in August, 1793, and substituted a new one, being that still recognized by the law, and the units of which have been already mentioned; the metre, the gramme, the arè, the litre, and the stere. To express the multiples of these units, the Greek words denominating

ten, a hundred, a thousand, and ten thousand, were prefixed as additional syllables, while their tenth, hundredth, and thousandth parts were denoted by similar prefixed syllables from the Latin language. Thus, the myria-metre is ten thousand, and the kilo-metre one thousand, the hecto-metre one hundred, and the deca-metre ten metres; each of those prefixed syllables being the Greek word expressive of those respective numbers; while the deci-metre, the centi-metre, and the milli-metre, are tenth, hundredth, and thousandth parts, signified by the Latin syllables respectively prefixed to them. The theory of this nomenclature is perfectly simple and beautiful. Twelve new words, five of which denote the things, and seven the numbers, include the whole system of metrology; give distinct and significant names to every weight, measure, multiple, and subdivision, of the whole system; discard the worst of all the sources of error and confusion in weights and measures, the application of the same name to different things; and keep constantly present to the mind the principle of decimal arithmetic, which combines all the weights and measures, the proportion of each weight or measure with all its multiples and divisions, and the chain of uniformity which connects together the profoundest researches of science with the most accomplished labors of art and the daily occupations and wants of domestic life in all classes and conditions of society. Yet this is the part of the system which has encountered the most insuperable obstacles in France. The French nation have refused to learn, or to repeat these twelve words. They have been willing to take a total and radical change of things; but they insist upon calling them by old names. They take the metre; but they must call one-third part of it a foot. They accept the kilogramme; but, instead of pronouncing its name, they choose to call one half of it a pound. Not that the third of a metre is a foot, or the half of a kilogramme is a pound; but because they are not very different from them, and because, in expressions of popular origin, distinctness of idea in the use of language is more closely connected with habitual usage than with precision of expression.

This observation may be illustrated by our own experience, in a change effected by ourselves in the denominations of our coins, a revolution by all experience known to be infinitely more easy to accomplish than that of weights and measures. At the close of our war for independence, we found ourselves with four English words, pound, shilling, penny, and farthing, to signify all our moneys of account. But, though English words, they were not English things. They were no where sterling: and scarcely in any two states of the Union were they representatives of the same sums. It was a Babel of confusion by the use of four words. In our new system of coinage we set them aside. We took the Spanish piece of eight, which had always been the coin most current among us, and to which we had given a name of our own-a dollar. Introducing the principle of decimal divisions, we said, a tenth part of our dollar shall be called a dime, a hundredth part a cent, and a thousandth part a mille. Like the French, we took all these new denominations from the Latin

language; but instead of prefixing them as syllables to the generic term dollar, we reduced them to monosyllables, and made each of them significant by itself, without reference to the unit of which they were fractional parts. The French themselves, in the application of their system to their coins, have followed our example; and, assuming the franc for their unit, call its tenth part a decime, and its hundredth a centime. It is now nearly thirty years since our new moneys of account, our coins, and our mint, have been established. The dollar, under its new stamp, has preserved its name and circulation. The cent has become tolerably familiarized to the tongue, wherever it has been made by circulation familiar to the hand. But the dime having been seldom, and the mille never, presented in their material images to the people, have remained so utterly unknown, that now, when the recent coinage of dimes is alluded to in our public journals, if their name is mentioned, it is always with an explanatory definition to inform the reader, that they are ten cent pieces; and some of them which have found their way over the mountains, by the generous hospitality of the country, have been received for more than they were worth, and have passed for an eighth, instead of a tenth, part of a dollar. Even now, at the end of thirty years, ask a tradesman, or shopkeeper, in any of our cities what is a dime or a mille, and the chances are four in five that he will not understand your question. But go to New York and offer in payment the Spanish coin, the unit of the Spanish piece of eight, and the shop or market-man will take it for a shilling. Carry it to Boston or Richmond, and you shall be told it is not a shilling, but nine pence. Bring it to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or the City of Washington, and you shall find it recognized for an eleven-penny bit; and if you ask how that can be, you shall learn that, the dollar being of ninety pence, the eighth part of it is nearer to eleven than to any other number: and pursuing still further the arithmetic of popular denominations, you will find that half eleven is five, or, at least, that half the eleven-penny bit is the fi-penny bit, which fi-penny bit at Richmond shrinks to four pence half-penny, and at New York swells to six pence. And thus we have English denominations most absurdly and diversely applied to Spanish coins; while our own lawfully established dime and mille remain, to the great mass of the people, among the hidden mysteries of poli⚫ tical economy-state secrets.

Human nature, in its broadest features, is every where the same. This result of our own experience, upon a small scale, and upon a single object, will easily account for the repugnance of the French people to adopt the new nomenclature of their weights and measures. It is not the length of the words that constitutes the objection against them, nor the difficulty of pronunciation; for, fi-penny bit is as hard to speak and as long a word as kilogramme, and eleven-penny bit has certainly more letters and syllables, and less euphony, than myria-metre. But it is because, in the ordinary operations of the mind, distinctness of idea is, by the laws of nature, linked with the chain of association between sensible images and their habitual