CHAPTER XII. 



DAIRY PRODUCE, EGGS AND POULTRY. 



POULTRY and game, in so far as the accounts supply me 

 with information, have been noted in the prices of stock. 

 Butter and cream, eggs and cheese are printed in a separate 

 table. It will be convenient to take dairy produce first, and 

 to make such comments on poultry and game, as the nature 

 of the evidence suggests, a little further on. Most of the 

 information I have comes from the Commons books of Cam- 

 bridge and Winchester, and from the private accounts of 

 individuals. 



BUTTER. The register of the price of butter fails me for 

 twenty years out of the whole period, twelve of those years 

 being between 1658 and 1670. I have therefore fuller in- 

 formation than I had for the 182 years dealt with in my third 

 and fourth volumes. Butter is generally sold by the pound, 

 but in the tables to which the entries are reduced I have 

 adopted a hypothetical dozen pounds, in order to avoid frac- 

 tions. Similarly in rare cases, I have dealt with the pint, an 

 Eastern Counties measure, as though it were a pound, have 

 reduced the firkin of 56 Ibs. to the same standard, and the 

 clove of eight pounds which is also found. There are, also 

 in the Eastern Counties, a few entries of butter by the yard, 

 a custom which I believe still survives. 



The course of the price of butter, as corrected by taking 

 decennial averages, illustrates the facts which have been ex- 

 hibited in other and similar cases. Butter gradually becomes 



