The corde, a field-measure used before the surveyor’s chain, was of variable length. In Burgundy the league of 3000 toises was divided for roadwork into 50 portées, of 12 cordes; these would thus be 5 toises or 30 feet. But there seems also to have been a corde of 33 feet, perhaps reduced feet, and thus = 30 royal feet, and this, doubled, was used as the rough measure of a ‘cord’ of firewood = 4 × 4 feet, in 4-foot logs. This is the probable origin of our ‘cord-wood’ as applied to stacked logs for fuel.
Land-measures
The units are the square toise = 4·543 sq. yards, the perche and the arpent, with other units in local usage.
There were three different perches officially recognised, and still in common use.
1. Perche d’ordonnance or of the Eaux et Forêts administration, 22 royal feet = 23·466 English feet; the square perch of 484 sq. feet = 13·44 sq. toises = 2 sq. rods.
The approximate coincidence of the quarter-aune with the reduced royal foot, i.e. of 12 Roman inches with 11 royal inches, was the probable reason of the standard perch being fixed at 22 feet = 24 Roman feet or 6 aunes.
The standard arpent was 100 square perches = 1344 sq. toises = 200 rods or 1·26 acre.
2. Perche commune, 20 royal feet = 21·3 English feet, the square perch of 400 sq. feet = 11·11 sq. toises = 50·47 sq. yards.
The arpent commun was 100 of these square perches = 1111 sq. toises = 1·04 acre.
3. Perche de Paris, 18 royal feet = 19·83 English feet, the square perch of 324 sq. feet = 9 sq. toises = 40·9 sq. yards.