6 oz. avoirdupois. Still further, it may not always occur to us that English measures, dry and liquid, need translating when their works are reprinted in the United States, as much as the French measures; for the imperial gallon, used for both dry and liquid measures, differs from both our gallons. It contains 1.2006 of our liquid gallons; our dry gallon contains 1.1631 of our liquid gallons.

But it is in the weights of the United States that we are more particularly interested. We will, therefore, take our leave of the rest of 5,400 and more weights and measures which Mr. Alexander has ranged in alphabetical order, from

Name.Locality.Character.Value.
“Aam; for wine,Amsterdam,Liquid capacity,41.00041 gall.” to
“Zuoja piccola,Udino,Superficial,0.8553 acres.”

Let us enquire what are the weights of the United States.—We find but one unambiguous term to measure the rest by, the grain. We have then:

grains
 1. The long ton,15,680,000      
 2. The ton,14,000,000      
 3. The quintal,784,000      
 4. The hundred weight,700,000      
 5. Quarter,196,000      
 6. Pound avoirdupois,7,000      
 7. Pound Troy,5,760      
 8. Pound Apothecaries’,5,760      
 9. Ounce Troy,480      
10. Ounce Apothecaries’,480      
11. Ounce Avoirdupois,437.5    
12. Drachm Apothecaries’,60      
13. Drachm Avoirdupois,54.6875 
14. Dram of the arithmetic,27.34375
15. Pennyweight,24      
16. Scruple,20      
17. Grain,1      

A formidable array truly! From this we see that while an ounce of cork is lighter than an ounce of gold, a pound of cork is heavier than a pound of gold! Nay, further, let the apothecary go to the druggist for a drachm of opium, and he will receive and pay for a drachm avoirdupois, a weight unknown even to Mr. Alexander, although in constant use in this city. But the moment he puts it into his mortar there is not a drachm of it! If he wishes to use a drachm in pills or tincture, he must add more than five grains to it. Could anything be more inconvenient or more prolific in mistakes? To prevent butter from becoming rancid, we are told to mix with it the bark of slippery elm, in the “proportion of a drachm (or dram) to the pound.” Who can tell what it means? Six different proportions might accord with this Delphic response; the most probable is 60:7000. But the grievance to which the apothecary is subject does not all consist in his buying by lighter ounces, and selling by heavier. The subdivisions by which he compounds have no reference to his convenience. Long habit alone can save him from either laborious calculation or risk of error. But still another chance of error comes into the account. Two characters,

and