The foot was of 16 digits, usually called _oncie_, inches, and 12 of these digits were taken for a palmo = 8·79 inches. Three of these palmi made the braccio, the cloth-ell, = 26·38 inches.
The Roman field-measures were a mixture of decimal chain-units and of lengths derived from seed-measures of land.
In Tuscany the standard was the braccio, = 22·98 inches, half of which was the palmo, = 11·49 inches. The braccio was divided, as if it were a money-pound, into 20 soldi, of 12 denari.
In the kingdom of Naples, with its population of Greek origin, the standard of length was the meridian mile, divided into 1000 Olympic fathoms or passi. But the passo was divided, not into six long feet, but, like the Egyptian royal cubit, into 7 palmi, = 10·4 inches. The usual standard was the Canna of 8 palmi, a reversion to the common Mediterranean measure of the reed of 8 spans.
In Genoa there was, and perhaps is still, a palmo = 9·764 inches, a length exactly that of the pán in several cities of Provence. It has changed but little since the time of Recorde’s ‘Pawn of Geans’ (1543) or since John Greaves (1647) gave it as = 9·78 inches.[45]
In this ‘pawn’ (the spelling of which shows that English had already lost the _a_ sound of the first vowel and had to represent it by _aw_) I see the fusion of two words etymologically different, the Italian _palmo_, L. _palmus_, and the Provençal _pán_, side, panel. See, in Chaps. IV and XXI, ‘The Pán of Marseilles.’
Genoa, the language of which district is a dialect of Provençal, has measures of the Provençal type. The measures of Provence will be described at length in Chap. XXI.
The standard is the Burgos foot = 11·127 inches, 3 feet making a Vara. This foot was originally = 10·944 inches,[46] i.e. half the Beládi cubit, brought by the Moors. This original standard has been preserved very nearly in the two-foot _Covado di ribera_, the shore-cubit, = 21·9157 inches, its half = 10·9578 inches.
As pointed out by Don V. V. Queipo (_Essai sur les Systèmes Métriques_, 1859), but not quite accurately. His values are often confused or obscure, but his work is most useful.
That the Burgos foot has deviated, like most Spanish weights and measures, from the accurate standards of the Moors, is shown by the length of the Spanish _Legua maritima_, the league of 3 meridian miles, or 6653·36 varas. At the modern standard of the Burgos foot this is