The well-known contrivance of the Quipus, or method of counting and even recording events by means of cords, was equally ingenious and original. The quipus of the Peruvians were of twisted wool, and consisted of a thick cord, with threads more or less fine, attached to the main part. The smaller lines were covered with knots, either single or double. The size of the quipus varies much, sometimes the main cord being five or six yards long, and at others not more than a foot; the branches rarely exceeding a yard in length, and being sometimes shorter. In the neighbourhood of Lurin, on the coast of Peru, a quipu was found which weighed twelve pounds. The different colours of the threads had different meanings: thus, the red signified a soldier, or war; the yellow gold; the white, silver, or peace, &c. In the system of arithmetic, a single knot signified 10, two single knots 20, a double knot 100, a triple knot 1000, and so on to higher numbers. But not only the colour and mode of combining the knots, but also the laying-up of the strands of the cord, and the distances of the threads apart, were of great importance in reading the quipus. It is probable that in the earliest times this ingenious contrivance was merely used for enumeration, as the shepherd notches the number of his sheep on a stick; but in the course of time the science was so much improved that the initiated were able to knot historical records, laws, and decrees, so that the great events of the empire were transmitted to posterity; and, to some extent, the quipus supplied the place of chronicles and national archives. The registry of tributes, the census of populations, the lists of arms, of soldiers, and of stores, the supplies of maize, clothes, shoes, &c., in the storehouses, were all specified with admirable exactness by the quipus; and in every town of any importance, there was an officer, called the quipu camayoc, to knot and decipher these documents.—Markham’s Visit to Peru.
Distances measured.
Many people hear of distances in thousands of yards—a usual measure of artillery distances—and have very little power of reducing them at once to miles. Now, four miles are ten yards for each mile above 7000 yards, whence the following rule: the number of thousands multiplied by 4 and divided by 7 give miles and sevenths for quotient and remainder, with only at the rate of ten yards to a mile in excess. Thus 12,000 yards is 48 7ths of a mile, or 6 miles and 6 7ths of a mile: not 70 yards too great. Again, people measure speed by miles per hour, the mile and the hour being too long for the judgment of distance and time. Take half as much again as the number of miles per hour, and you have the number of feet per second, too great by one in 30. Thus 16 miles an hour is 16 + 8, or 24 feet per second, too much by 24-30ths of a foot.—Athenæum, No. 1854.
Uniformity of Weights and Measures.
A collection of the Weights and Measures of the various countries of the world, made, under the auspices of the International Association, for obtaining a uniform Decimal System of Measures, Weights, and Coins, was among the curiosities of the International Exhibition of 1862. Few persons are perhaps aware of the extraordinary diversities in weights and measures, and in their use, which exist in our own country. The price of com, for instance, will be quoted in at least fifteen different ways in as many different localities; at so much per cwt., per barrel, per quarter, per bushel, per load, per bag, per weight, per boll, per coomb, per hobbet, per winch, per windle, per strike, per measure, per stone. The word bushel is in some places used for a measure, in others for a weight, and this weight is by no means the same in all places. In different English towns the bushel means—168 lbs., 73½ lbs., 62 lbs., 80 lbs., 75 lbs., 72 lbs., 70 lbs., 65 lbs., 64 lbs., 63 lbs., 5 quarters, 144 quarts, 488 lbs., and in Manchester, while a bushel of English wheat is 60 lbs., a bushel of American wheat is 70 lbs. The meaning of a stone is almost equally various. An acre of land expresses seven different quantities. These variations in measurement must be highly inconvenient, and prejudicial to trade; and the labours of the above-named Association are directed to bringing about a uniformity, which seems greatly called for. The metrical system employed in France is that which is advocated. This has been already established in Belgium, Holland, Sardinia, Lombardy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and many other parts of the world. Great Britain and the American States still adhere to their old systems.
Trinity High-water Mark.
Trinity High-water Mark is placed in various parts of London, as described in the Register of Tides in the River Thames, printed by order of the Honourable Court of Commissioners, of the 26th of October, 1849; and every bench-mark in London is shown in feet and decimals of feet above an oblate spheroidal datum plane, decreasing in radii towards the north pole from the centre of gravity between the parallels of latitude at London and Liverpool, about 2·02 feet, or 24¼ inches, which is evidently worthy of consideration, at a rate of 2 feet to the mile in 40 miles of sewer. The difference at Liverpool is also given in the aforesaid Report; and this may prove of public utility if reported on by the engineer employed in the levelling of the main drainage of London. The Ravensbourne drainage is a specimen of such levelling. The approximate mean water at Liverpool is 12½ feet below the level of Trinity High-Water at London, as described identical with the level of the datum plane of the Ordnance survey of London, which is also 12½ feet below the level of Trinity High-Water mark.
Origin of Rent.
The want of intelligent workmen, without the concurrence of other causes, might have destroyed the old English predial polity, if that system had not failed through its own nature; having been essentially rude and awkward and uncommercial. Under the Plantagenets, service could in general be reduced to money at the discretion of the lord or the option of the tenant. The service often cost the tenant more than it was worth—he found it cheaper to pay than to work: on the other hand, money must have been at all times welcome to the lord, and he did not at all times require labour. In the course of time agricultural service went out of use altogether, and money was regularly tendered and accepted instead of it: so that the improved rent, as it has been called, now paid by a farmer, appears to be a compound—historically considered—of the ancient mail or gable, and of a great variety of petty charges, which were originally compensations for tributes of corn, malt, poultry, bacon, and eggs—or fines for the non-performance of acts of tillage, carriage, porterage, and the like. The elements of rent were recognised in Scotland longer than in England, because petty charges subsisted in Scotland for some time after they had been abandoned in England. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, David Deans—the tough true-blue Presbyterian farmer—still paid “mail duties, kain, arriage, carriage, dry multure, lock, gowpen, and knaveship, and all the various exactions now commuted for money, and summed up in the emphatic word Rent.”—Heart of Mid-Lothian, chap. viii.; Law Magazine, N. S., No. 27.