These have mostly been given in the story of the pán and in the seed-measures corresponding to the land-measures.
Throughout the system the divisions in each series are sexdecimal, even the Cosso, 1/20 Eiminado, being 1/160 Saumado.
There were three types of pounds in South France, local variations from these being very slight. The pound was always 16 ounces, each of 8 ternau. The Ternau, so called from its being divided into 3 pennyweights, was the Arab dirhem. The three types of pound were:
Languedoc lb. = 6400 grs. Ounce = 400 grs. Ternau = 50 grs.
The Quintal was 100 of these pounds, but long hundredweights were common. Its quarter was the Rub (Ar. _rouba_, four). These weights are nearly obsolete, as the possession of any weights not of the Republican system would be illegal. The measures of length and capacity are often slightly altered so as to be in metric units: the pán becomes a quarter-metre; groceries are often ticketed by the hectogramme, as this is known to coincide very closely with the old Southern quarter-pound.
We now pass to the Northern or Paris system, mostly taken from the South, and bearing evident traces of this origin.
The Roman foot survived in North France as the quarter of the Aune or ell, a measure = 46·77 inches. (Cf. the passetto or double braccio of Tuscany, of 4 palmi = 45·96 inches.) As a cloth-measure the Aune was divided, like our cloth-yard and ell, into eighths and sixteenths.
But there was also the pied de roi, the royal foot, one-sixth of the Toise, which = 76·73 inches = 1·949 metre.
The royal foot, = 12·789 inches, was divided into inches (pouces) of 12 lines, each of 12 points. Its standard was traditionally referred to Charlemagne, either to the length of his foot, or to a standard brought to him by the envoys of Harūn-al-Rashid. It coincides with half a Hashími cubit, 25·56/2 = 12·78 inches. This tradition must be dismissed; new measures are not introduced as standards in that way. It was simply one-sixth of the toise, which was a Cano from civilised South France, but its standard was so ill-kept as to be of doubtful exactitude. All that is known of its standard is that, about 1668, an iron rod was fixed in a wall of the Grand Chatelet in Paris and that the length of this rod was that of half the breadth of the eastern gateway of the Louvre-palace, which gateway was, according to the plans, 12 feet in breadth. This standard was, however, considered to be 5/12 inch short of the customary toise.