WEIGHTS AND MEASURES are the subject of a series of legislative enactments commencing with an Act of 1878, known as the Weights and Measures Act, which consolidated the law on the subject, and, except as to the METRIC SYSTEM which was effectively established by one of the later acts, settled definitely the system upon which contracts must be concluded and dealings carried out. The last statutes on the subject are the Weights and Measures Act, 1904, and the Cran Measures Act, 1908. The result of these statutes is to abolish or localise a very large number of weights and measures which even yet appear in many table and arithmetic books, though the use of them, except as names for parts or multiples of legal units, is now generally illegal. The statutes themselves set out in schedules those standards known as the IMPERIAL STANDARDS [and see METRIC SYSTEM], and from which under the authority of the statutes the Privy Council has from time to time devised and legalised certain " secondary standards," such as the " cental" or cwt. of 100 lbs., which is the cwt. of the United States of America,
and is in Caqada the only unit of weight for all kinds of grain. The action at various times by the Privy Council appears in the Statutory Rules and Orders. In 1870 there were Orders in Council legalising corn weights, including metric weights of 15 to half-sovereign, and legalising new standard decimal grain weights. There was a like order in 1871 legalising new liquid measures of capacity, gas measures, and measures of length with subdivisions ; and one in 1876 legalising measures of 100 feet, and of the chain of 66 feet with subdivisions laid down in Trafalgar Square. And in 1879 there were orders legalising the cental or new hundredweight, and also certain new standards of apothecaries' weights and measures. Sub sequent orders have legalised, in 1880, the four-bushel measure and the five.