Hand (unit) inches for the handsbreadth; Mortimer gives the same, three inches for the Hand's-breadth, and four for the "Handful, or simply, Hand", but adds "The hand among horse-dealers, &c. is four-fingers' breadth, being the fist clenched, whereby the height of a horse is measured", thus equating "hand" with both the palm and the fist. Similarly, Wright's 1831 translation of Buffon mentions "A hand breadth (palmus), the breadth of the four fingers of the hand, or three inches", but the "Encyclopædia Perthensis" of 1816 gives under Palm (4): "A hand, or measure of lengths comprising three inches". Today the hand is used
Tree height measurement length, and by moving your arm up and down; 2) once aligned, measure the distance from the top of your hand grasping the base of the stick to your eye; 3) measure the distance from the top of your hand to the top of the stick; 4) measure the distance from your eye to the base of the tree. So long as the yardstick is held straight up and down and the top of the tree is vertically over the base, the various measurements are still proportional and then you can calculate the height of the tree using a simple