pounds, so that the present pound
would not be much altered. But I think that by this scheme the
foot would be too large, and that the inconvenience of changing
all the foot measures and things depending on them, would be
much greater than changing all the pounds, bushels, gallons,
etc. I therefore give the preference to those plans which retain
the foot and ounce.

The war of the standards still rages--metric, or decimal, or no change.
What each nation has is good enough for it in the opinion of many of its
people. Some day an international commission will doubtless assemble to
bring order out of chaos. As far as the English-speaking race is
concerned, it seems that a decided improvement could readily be
affected with very trifling, indeed scarcely perceptible, changes.
Especially is this so with money values. Britain could merge her system
with those of Canada and America, by simply making her "pound" the exact
value of the American five dollars, it being now only ten pence less;
her silver coinage one and two shillings equal to quarter- and
half-dollars, the present coin to be recoined upon presentation, but
meanwhile to pass current. Weights and measures are more difficult to
assimilate. Science being world-wide, and knowing no divisions, should
use uniform terms. Alas! at the distance of nearly a century and a half
we seem no nearer the prospect of a system of universal weights and
measures than in Watt's day, but Watt's idea is not to be lost sight of
for all that. He was a seer who often saw what was to come.

We have referred to the absence of holidays in Watt's strenuous life,
but Birmingham was remarkable for a number of choice spirits who formed
the celebrated Lunar Society, whose members were all devoted to the
pursuit of knowledge and mutually agreeable to one another. Besides Watt
and Boulton, there were Dr. Priestley, discoverer of oxygen gas, Dr.
Darwin, Dr. Withering, Mr. Keir, Mr. Galton, Mr. Wedgwood of Wedgwood
ware fame, who had monthly dinners at their respective houses--hence the
"Lunar" Society. Dr. Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, who arrived in
Birmingham in 1780, has repeatedly mentioned the great pleasure he had
in having Watt for a neighbor. He says:

I consider my settlement at Birmingham as the happiest event in
my life; being highly favourable to every object I had in view,
philosophical or theological. In the former respect I had the
convenience