When a _quart_, a quarter-lb., say of coffee, is asked for, the grocer has to put into the scale three weights, of 100, 20 and 5 grammes, for a demi-livre two weights of 200 and 50 grammes, instead of being able to use a single half- or quarter-pound weight as under the Napoleonic compromise. For an ounce he gives 30 grammes. In country towns goods are often openly ticketed in sous; I have even seen ‘six liards,’ six half-farthings, two for three-halfpence, as the marked price. In the South books and newspapers sometimes have the price boldly printed in sous, ‘20 sous,’ &c. In large shops, especially where there is a cash-desk, the salesmen have trained themselves to speak only of francs and centimes, but the smaller shopkeepers, even in Paris, usually say their prices in sous, at least for prices under two or three francs. The peasant bargains for cattle in écus (half-crowns) or in pistoles of 10 francs; wages of farm labourers are still often in écus. Land is reckoned in the old measures according to local custom, and tables of these measures, with their metric equivalents, are given in the ‘Usages Locaux’ published for the use of _juges de paix_ and other officials. Farms to let and land for sale are frequently advertised in these local measures. If the extent is given in hectares, the local equivalent in vergées, seterées, &c., is added. I have such advertisements of recent date. The master of a government school in Normandy advertised the sale of his haystack by auction. The advertisement (in a newspaper of 1906, now before me) gave the weight of the hay as ‘5000 kilos (10,000 livres).’ He knew that the fathers of his pupils understood, as well as he did, a kilo to be 2 pounds, but he also knew that they would be much readier to bid if the weight was stated in pounds. Market-prices of agricultural produce are frequently stated by newspapers in the old measures; that of apples is constantly recorded by the barattée, literally the churnful, about equal to our bushel. The old agrarian measures are used quite close to Paris. I ask a farmer, not six miles from Paris, how much land he has, and he, knowing me to be ‘safe,’ says so many estrées. How much is an estrée? 1600 square toises is his answer. I take up a Paris daily paper and see several advertisements of mushroom farms for sale, in the old quarries near Paris; the area of these is always given in toises. Direct inquiries will always be answered most favourably to the metric system. The peasant’s caution will rarely let the inquirer detect his love of the old weights and measures, quite convenient to him. And the bourgeois, proud of his superior education and glorying in the triumphs of the metric system abroad, ignores the existence of any but the legal system; he is blind and deaf to the constant evidence which strikes the unprejudiced observer.