Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution (league) had a number of variations, particularly the "aune" (which was used to measure cloth The "loi du 19 frimaire an VIII" (Law of 10 December 1799) states that one decimal metre is exactly 443.296 French lines, or "3 pieds 11.296 lignes de la "Toise du Pérou"". Thus the French royal foot is exactly 9000/27,706 metres (about 0.3248 m). In Quebec, the surveys in French units were converted using the relationship 1 "pied" (of the French variety, the same word being used for English feet as well) = 12.789 English inches. This makes the Quebec "pied" very slightly smaller (about
Pied raven Had the black and pied ravens mated preferentially with their own morph, in time the pied part of the population might have prevailed, as its coloration probably would have provided better camouflage when preying on seabirds (most of which are also black-and-white). The first record of the pied raven seems to be in the pre-1500 "kvæði" "Fuglakvæði eldra" ("The elder ballad of birds") which mentions 40 local species, including the great auk. Later, the pied raven is mentioned in the reports of Lucas Debes (1673) and Jens Christian Svabo (1781/82). Carl Julian von Graba in 1828 speaks of ten individuals