When under a strong central government a metric system more or less scientific was introduced at Babylon, it was natural that an accurate adjustment of the old empirical unit of merchandise, the _load_, to the mina and shekel should be carefully carried out, just as in China the Mathematical Board have fixed the _picul_ of commerce as the hundred fold of the _ching_ (_catty_), giving it a value equal to 133⅓ lbs. avoirdupois. Such scientific adjustments take place in all countries with the advance of civilization and commerce, and above all under the influence of a strong central government. Let us reflect how long it has taken for the English Statute Acre to conquer the local ancient acres in use in various parts of the United Kingdom, such as the Irish, the Scotch or the Winchester acre. In like fashion, although the standards of weight and capacity were regulated by Act of Parliament in 1824, local usage still held on, and units of weight unknown to the Statute still survive in the usage of provincial places. Now it is not unreasonable to suppose that the name _royal_ or _king’s weight_ was given to the Babylonian commercial system, which was constructed on purely sexagesimal lines, because it was enforced by royal proclamation and power throughout the whole of the empire, and that in like manner the _royal cubit_ mentioned by Herodotus (I. 178) owes its origin to the establishment of one uniform standard for the dominions of the Great King. In fact no better illustration of what took place can be found than that afforded by our own terms such as _imperial pint_, or _imperial_ gallon, or in a less degree by the _statute_ acre, as contrasted with the older customary pints, or gallons, or acres. The mistake made by metrologists, in regarding the scientifically constructed Babylonian system as the first beginning of the art of weighing, is just as great as if a person writing a manual of English Metrology were to start with the metric legislation of 1824 as the first beginning of our metrology, and were to try and explain all traces of an earlier system or systems by forcing the facts into some sort of conformity with our modern standards. Undoubtedly in such an effort great facility would be found inasmuch as the present scientific standards are simply the ancient units of the realm accurately defined. But the reader will best understand the relations which probably existed between the Babylonian _royal_ standard (both single and double) by having a short account of the adjustment of our standards laid before him. Great inconvenience having been felt in the United Kingdom for a long time from the want of uniformity in the system of weights and measures, which were in use in different parts of it, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1824 and came into force on January the 1st 1826, by which certain measures and weights therein specified were declared to be the only lawful ones in this realm under the name of _imperial weights and measures_.