Genre:

Reportage, Spoof

Subjects:

Measurement, Mapping, Metrology, Domestic Economy

    Reports on the 'Great disputes that have arisen among engineers and scientific gentlemen as to the particular scale that should be adopted in taking the survey of a fashionable lady's dress'. Presents the arguments of Francis R Charteris (Lord Elcho) for the adoption of a scale of 'twenty-five inches to the mile', and his answers to the objection that the map of a dress on his scale would be enormous. Concludes with Roderick I Murchison's argument that a one-inch scale map should be used because a larger-scale map would be 'useless and extravagant' and husbands only needed to have milliner's bills to 'estimate the quantity' of material.