METRICAL, SYSTEM. The French system of measures, which was adopted and received the sanction of the French Gov ernment November 2d, 1801, after a most elaborate investigation by the greatest scientists of France, is based on the decimal cal culation and is intendel to be the standard of all the world. Brad. street's, in a late issue, says : " It has been made the only legal system of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Brazil, Turkey, Roumania, Moldavia, Wallachia, the French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies. It has also been adopted by the majority of the South American States ; in part by Switz erland, Greece and Denmark; legalized by Great Britain, and made obligatory in British India. Russia has also taken the initiatory steps towards its adoption. In 1866 it was legalized in the United States. It thus appears that the system has received the approbation of the majority of civilized nations.
Some of its advantages are as folb,ws : Its base, the metre, is unalterable, being practically the length of a certain platinum bar constructed to he equal to one ten-millionth part of the earth's quadrant, passing through Paris. As thousands of copies of the original bar have been made, and are almost everywhere in use, we have for the unit of length a standard as unalterable as the meridian itself. On the other hand, the barleycorn, foot, grain,
pennyweight, and such like, were taken from common things as standards, which once may have been real equivalents, but with entire lack of correspondence now ; and so it comes to pass that more than one hundred foot-measures of different lengths have been in use one time or another in Europe, and more than five thousand different units of weights and measures are said to have existed in the world. Its simplicity :* the system being com posed of twelve words, each in itself expressive of value, as against about fifty in our present system. Its uniformity : rendering mutually intelligible our own and foreign books that contain state ments of weights and measures, facilitating commerce and trade by avoiding delays and difficulties in reducing values from one system to another. The bulk of our imports and exports is with nations using in whole or part the metric. Another very great advantage is, that the relation existing between the measures of length, volume, weight and capacity, is such that, given the weight of a body, its volume can be easily determined, and, reciprocally, a relation not existing in our present system.