8. How the Acre came to be 160 Rods
The North German acker or morgen is 160 ruthen. Why? It may be presumed that, on the sexdecimal system dear to the bucolic mind throughout the world, it was 16 times an original unit of 10 square ruthen, of 16 feet square, analogous to the Greek plethron of 10 square kalamoi and to the Provençal cosso of 10 square fathom-rods. There is still extant, in North Holland, the snees, snick, or score, of land, = 20 square roede.
The Austrian joch is 1600 square ‘klafter’ of 6 feet = 1·42 acre.
There are 1600 square rods in our square furlong, the original square unit of which the acre is a one-tenth slice.
In Provence, the people, long under Roman influence, are yet much more Greek than Roman, and there is not a trace of any Roman standard among their weights and measures. There the greater land-unit is the saumado of 1600 square cano of 6 feet. It is divided in two ways: (1) on the sexdecimal system,[[20]] (2) into 160 cosso, each of 10 square cano.
It seems as if the 1600 small units in our square furlong, in the Austrian joch, in the Provençal saumado, come from an extension of the sexdecimal multiple 16 to 160 and 1600.