Lines 120-121:  five minutes were equal to forty ounces, etc.

In the left margin, and parallel to it:  “In the Middle Ages an hour was equal to 480 ounces of find sand or 22,560 atoms.”

I am unable to check either this statement or the poet’s calculations in regard to five minutes, i.e., three hundred seconds, since I do not see how 480 can be divided by 300 or vice versa, but perhaps I am only tired.  On the day (July 4) John Shade wrote this, Gradus the Gunman was getting ready to leave Zembla for his steady blunderings through two hemispheres (see note to line 181).