Mint-marc 8 oz. × 8 gros × 3 deniers × 24 grains. Medicinal lb. of 12 oz. × 8 drachmes × 3 scrupules × 24 grains. Commercial lb. of 16 oz. × 8 gros × 72 grains. In this system, common to France, Spain, Portugal, Florence, and Rome, the ounce is divided into 576 parts or grains, while the Troy ounce of the rest of Europe is of 480 grains. This makes the Latin grain lighter. In the medicinal pound, more or less international throughout the West, the 24 Scruples of the ounce are grouped into 8 drachms of 3 scruples. It may be concluded that the English Troy pound was a Northern weight with its ounce of 480 instead of 576 parts. It has no direct connexion but in name with the marc of Troyes. It probably came to us as an apothecary’s and goldsmith’s pound, and in the latter, the Latin factors 24 scruples × 20 grains were transposed for mint purposes so as to preserve the ancient pennyweight 1/20 ounce of the Tower pound. But in the apothecary’s Troy pound the ounce remained divided into 24 scruples (8 drachms of 3 scruples) each of 20 grains as in other countries except France, &c. The story of the goldsmiths’ Carat and Grain will be found in Chapter XX, that of the Provençal weights, from which the French Troy was derived, in Chapter XVIII. 3. THE PRIDE AND FALL OF TROY The myth of the 32 wheat-corns which formed the basis of the Tower pound = 5400 grains, passed to the Troy pound = 5760 grains, and this deliberate fiction lasted till the time of Elizabeth and perhaps later. It did little harm as regards these mint-pounds, but its application to the Averdepois pound, alleged to be an offshoot of the royal pound, either as 25 shillings, that is 300 pennyweights of 32 wheat-corns, or as 15 ounces Troy, or at a later period as 16 ounces Troy, produced a mental obliquity which is most lamentable. The jury of merchants and goldsmiths appointed in 1574 to examine the ancient standards, and construct a new set, declared that ‘the one sorte of weight nowe in use is commonlie called the troie weight and that other sorte thereof is also commonlie called the avoir de poiz weight, and further they say that both the saide consiste compounded frome thauncient Englishe penye named a sterling rounde and unclipped which penny is limeted to waie twoo and thirtie grains of wheate in the midest of the eare and twentie of those pence make an oz. and twelf of those ounc make one pound troie.’ They go on to ‘saie that the said twoo sortes of weights doe differ in weight the one from the other three ounces troie at the pounde weight, for the pounde weight troie doth consiste onlie of xii oz. troie and the lb. weight of avoir de poiz weight dothe consiste of fiftene ounc troie.’ Thomas Hylles, in his ‘Arte of Vulgar Arithmeticke’ (1600), showed himself emancipated from the superstition of troy weight so far as to say: