of Henry VII. was reached by first fixing the weight of the penny sterling by means of 32 grains of wheat, round and dry and "taken from the midst of the ear of wheat after the old laws of the land." Again the Irish Kelts did not say that the unga or ounce must contain so many screapalls, and each screapall so many pingiuns, but they proceeded in quite the reverse way first fixing the weight of the pingiun by eight grains of wheat. We may then well assume that such too was the process among Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Hindus. Brahmegupta, and the legislators quoted above support this view by starting always with the smallest unit. It is only when we come to the system of Babylon we are asked to reverse the process, to admit that the idea of weights began with corn, the very commodity of all others which, according to all the instances previously quoted, was the last to be valued by weight, and which even amongst ourselves at this present moment can hardly be said to be regarded as an article appraised by weight. But furthermore if the Assyrians regarded the Talent as their unit, and their lesser denominations as its subdivisions, why did not the maker of the weight mentioned above inscribe it as 3/4 obol, or by some other term to indicate that it was essentially regarded as a fraction of a higher denomination, and not as a multiple of a lower? But the ancient Assyrian who made the weight must plainly have regarded it in the latter light, for otherwise he would not have engraved on it 22 grains 1/2, actually resorting to the fraction of a grain. The only reasonable explanation of his conduct is that he was as firmly impressed with the idea that the basis of his system was the grain of corn (wheat) as were Brahmagupta, or Henry VII.'s parliament with the idea that the barley-corn and wheat-corn were the bases of their respective systems. If the objection be raised that the grains of corn were only devised in days long after the scientific fixing of weight standards, my answer is that if it was necessary to employ natural seeds as a means of determining the accuracy of scientifically obtained units, à fortiori it was necessary for mankind to have employed such seeds as their first step in the establishing of a system of weights.
No simpler idea connected with weight could have struck
