January 27.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

1826. The alteration of the standard this year, in order to its uniformity throughout the kingdom, however inconvenient to individuals in its first application, will be ultimately of the highest public advantage. The difference between beer, wine, corn, and coal measure, and the difference of measures of the same denomination in different counties, were occasions of fraud and grievance without remedy until the present act of parliament commenced to operate. In the twelfth year of Henry VII. a standard was established, and the table was kept in the treasury of the king's exchequer, with drawings on it, commemorative of the regulation, and illustrating its principles. The original document passed into the collection of the liberal Harley, earl of Oxford, and there being a print of it with some of its pictorial representations, an engraving is here given of the mode of trial which it exhibits as having been used in the exchequer at that period.

Trial of Weights and Measures under Henry VII.

From the same instrument is also taken the smaller diagram. They are curious specimens of the care used by our ancestors to establish and exemplify rules by which all purchases and sales were to be effected. In that view only they are introduced here. Conformity to the new standard is every man's business and interest, and daily experience will prove its wisdom and justice. It would be obviously inexpedient to state any of the parliamentary provisions in this work, which now merely records one of the most remarkable and laudable acts in the history of our legislation.

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NATURALISTS' CALENDAR.

Mean Temperature   . . .   37 . 82.