308 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



places by the stone of fourteen pounds, in some by the stone of 

 sixteen pounds. A dozen of eggs is in some places fifteen. I 

 may perhaps be asked, if this is not in Ireland j but I shall not 

 say, excepting to add, as far as my experience goes, fifteen to a 

 dozen would be a very proper index of Irish hospitality and 

 kindness. In one market, in Yorkshire, a pound of butter is 

 twenty ounces avoirdupois ; in Staffordshire, eighteen ounces. 

 In Norwich, butter is sold by the pint ; in Cambridge, it is 

 literally sold by the yard, being made into rolls of a certain size, 

 and measured off in feet and inches. In one of our hot days in 

 July, with the glass at 95, our market-men, at this rate, would 

 have little difficulty in giving full measure. I have already 

 alluded to the force of custom. It has many advantages, but 

 why should it stand in the way of improvement ? The preva 

 lence of an unmeaning or a useless custom has nothing to 

 recommend it. Yet I believe I shall be doing no injustice to the 

 English, the last thing certainly which I should wish to do to a 

 people whom I so highly respect and love, if I were to say, 

 many of them greatly prefer antiquity to utility, and will hold on 

 to an ancient custom with the pertinacity of a drowning man, 

 though its meaning has entirely ceased, and its observance is on 

 every account inconvenient and burdensome. With such persons, 

 all argument on the subject of improvement is idle ; the concep 

 tion has never yet dawned upon them. 



Such a varying standard of weight, or measure, or value, 

 renders many statements quite unintelligible to a stranger or 

 one ignorant of local customs, and comparisons and calculations 

 all but impossible. 



3. WEIGHT OF ANIMALS, MODE OF ASCERTAINING. The 



weight of an animal in Smithfield is reckoned by the weight 

 of the four quarters. The hide, rough tallow, and offal, are not 

 taken into the account. There are rules given by which to 

 determine the weight of animals, when slaughtered, by external 

 measurement of them when alive. The salesmen in Smithfield 

 do not rely upon these rules, but estimate the weight of cattle 

 by the eye ; and mere judgment, founded upon long practice, 

 evinces most extraordinary approaches to exactness, seldom vary 

 ing but few pounds. The rules, however, to which I refer, have 

 a value to persons who are not accustomed to estimate by the 



