Picard used the toise in his measurement of an arc of meridian from Malvoisin to London in 1669. The meridians measured by the Academy in 1735 to settle the question of the figure of the earth were made by means of two standard toises, known as the “Toise du Nord,” and the “Toise du Sud.” The first, used by Maupertuis, Clairault, and Le Monnier, in Lapland, was destroyed by immersion in sea-water, when their ship was wrecked on the return voyage. The second, with which La Condamine, Bourgner, and Godin operated in Peru, was the original of the toise Canivet made in 1768, and of the standards used in determining the mètre. The commencement of the move for a scientific standard of length in France which resulted in the mètre was in 1790, when the revolutionary government proposed to England the formation of a commission of equal numbers from the English Royal Society and the French Academy, for the purpose of fixing the length of the seconds pendulum at latitude 45° as the basis of a new system of measures. This proposal was not favorably received, and the Academy, at the request of government, appointed as a commission Borda, Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, and Condorcet, to decide whether the seconds pendulum, the quarter of the equator, or the quarter of a meridian, should be used as the natural standard for the new system of measures. They settled on the last as best for the purpose, and resolved that the ten millionth of the meridian quadrant, or distance from equator to pole, measured at sea level, be taken for basis of the new system, and be called a mètre. Delambre and Mechin were at once charged with re-measurement of the meridian surveyed in 1739 by La Caille and Cassini, from Dunkirk to Perpignan, and its extension to Barcelona. Operations were commenced in 1792, and carried on with great accuracy to completion in 1799; Delambre working between Dunkirk and Paris, and Mechin between Paris and Barcelona. The distance measured from Dunkirk to Barcelona was 9° 40´ 24·24´´ of arc, or 1,075,059 mètres, as reduced to the new standard. The “toise de Peru” was the standard used in the work at a temperature of 13° R. Two base-lines were measured with Borda’s compensating bars of brass and platinum; one at Melun, near Paris, 6076 toises long, and the second at Perpignan, 6028 toises long, and though over 900,000 mètres apart, the calculated length differed by only 10 pouces. This meridian was afterward, in 1806, extended by Gen. Roy to Greenwich, on the north, and by Biot and Arago to Formentera, on the south. The results, as given by Laplace in centesimal degrees and mètres, are as follows: Greenwich 57·19753° ·0 mètres. Pantheon, Paris 54·27431° 292,719·3 “ Formentera 42·96178° 1,423,636·1 “ The middle of the arc being 50·079655° Cent., or 45° 4´ 18·0822´´ Sexa., and the middle degree centesimal being very nearly 100,000 mètres.