of these natural units of length in the East, that even now some of the Arabs mete out cloth by the forearm.  So, too, is it with European measures.  The foot prevails as a dimension throughout Europe, and has done since the time of the Romans, by whom, also, it was used:  its lengths in different places varying not much more than men’s feet vary.  The heights of horses are still expressed in hands.  The inch is the length of the terminal joint of the thumb; as is clearly shown in France, where pouce means both thumb and inch.  Then we have the inch divided into three barley-corns.

So completely, indeed, have these organic dimensions served as the substrata of all mensuration, that it is only by means of them that we can form any estimate of some of the ancient distances.  For example, the length of a degree on the Earth’s surface, as determined by the Arabian astronomers shortly after the death of Haroun-al-Raschid, was fifty-six of their miles.  We know nothing of their mile further than that it was 4000 cubits; and whether these were sacred cubits or common cubits, would remain doubtful, but that the length of the cubit is given as twenty-seven inches, and each inch defined as the thickness of six barley-grains.  Thus one of the earliest measurements of a degree comes down to us in barley-grains.  Not only did organic lengths furnish those approximate measures which satisfied men’s needs in ruder ages, but they furnished also the standard measures required in later times.  One instance occurs in our own history.  To remedy the irregularities then prevailing, Henry I. commanded that the ulna, or ancient ell, which answers to the modern yard, should be made of the exact length of his own arm.

Measures of weight again had a like derivation.  Seeds seem commonly to have supplied the unit.  The original of the carat used for weighing in India is a small bean.  Our own systems, both troy and avoirdupois, are derived primarily from wheat-corns.  Our smallest weight, the grain, is a grain of wheat.  This is not a speculation; it is an historically registered fact.  Henry III. enacted that an ounce should be the weight of 640 dry grains of wheat from the middle of the ear.  And as all the other weights are multiples or sub-multiples of this, it follows that the grain of wheat is the basis of our scale.  So natural is it to use organic bodies as weights, before artificial weights have been established, or where they are not to be had, that in some of the remoter parts of Ireland the people are said to be in the habit, even now, of putting a man into the scales to serve as a measure for heavy commodities.