Note 10 — Chapter VIII

This careful attention to details is better set forth by a statement of the skill and delicacy [displayed] in the construction of the weighing instrument which serves as standard in this capital, and is kept in the archives in the building of the municipal cabildo; it is a work which for its elegance might be valued in any one of the principal cities of España and of the Indias. It is a small one, such as is required by the weights which it carries; it is made in the form of a cross, of rich tombac10 and the finest gold. In the semicircle which indicates the play of the index needle, a pendent pearl serves as ornament. The scales are of the same metal, gold and tombac, and the silken threads which sustain them of silk dyed red. The whole instrument works with so rigid exactness that when the smallest weight—a thirty-second of a grain of wheat, or the eleven hundred and fifty-second part of an adarme—which is an almost imperceptible amount, is placed in either of the said scales the index of this steelyard shows the difference.