The French Setier in its different senses of a load of corn, of a bushel, of a double gallon, and of a pint, had long lost all connection with L. _sextuarius_; it had indeed got to mean a quarter in the same way that in Italy the _sestiero_, originally one of the six districts of a city, had acquired a similar sense to the French _quartier_ as a district. The French setier or sestié had so lost its original meaning as to be often written ‘septier,’ as if it were a seventh. The Greek obolos (originally meaning a copper nail), 1/6 of a drachm, acquired in Latin the sense of ‘half.’ When the drachma took the weight-sense of 60 grains, an obolus was 10 grains; but this was half a scruple, so it took a general sense of ‘half,’ and the halfpenny was latinised as an obolus. Maille was the corresponding French word for halfpenny, being It. _medaglio_, Prov. _medaio_, akin not only to ‘medal’ but also to ‘metal,’ in which there seems to be a sense of ‘half’ of an alloy. Yet it became a weight of 1/4 ounce, perhaps from being half of the loth or half-ounce. And the Fr. _felin_, It. _ferlino_, probably corruptions of vierling or farthing, on becoming 1/4 of the _maille_, was 1/16 of the ounce. In the section on terms used in old land-measures I have shown the equivocal sense of words related to ‘ferling.’ Our Yard, from the influence of its French equivalents—_verge_, rod, and _vergée_, rood—became a quarter-acre, and then a quarter-hide. The Drachm as a part of the Troy ounce, 1/8, became the dram as a part of the averdepois ounce, 1/16. As a measure it became 1/8 of a spirit pint. The terms signifying 1/12, 1/16, 1/24 and some smaller fractions of weights or measures, show a development of meaning which will be given in the following sections. 2. THE NAIL AND THE CLOVE; THE INCH AND THE OUNCE The yard is lawfully divided (as was also the ell) into 4 quarters and 16 nails. The hundredweight is divided into 4 quarters, 8 stones and 16 cloves or nails. How did ‘Nail’ come to mean a sixteenth of a unit, length or weight? The ‘New English Dictionary’ throws no light on the origin of this peculiarly English term. The only other general name I know for a sixteenth is the Indian ‘anna,’ the sixteenth of a rupee, of a crop, of a venture, &c.