142 AN AGRICULTURAL FAGGOT. 



honoured than it deserves to be for his enlightened efforts 

 in the cause of agricultural progress, and the foremost 

 part which he played in the farming reformation at the 

 end of the last century. He was one of the earliest to 

 devote careful attention to the subject of estimating the 

 live weight of cattle, and the article above referred to was 

 prefatory to a series of calculations which he termed 

 " The Farmer's, Grazier's, and Butcher's Ready Reckoner : 

 a short Table by which the Weight of Stock, according 

 to the different usages in England, can be ascertained, 

 and the Value of Stock of any Size, with the difference, 

 at once discovered." This compendium was adopted by 

 the Bath and West Society, was printed " in a convenient 

 size for the pocket/' and sold by the secretary at the 

 Society's rooms. 



Lord Somerville's table did not precisely deal with the 

 method of ascertaining the weight of stock, being more 

 immediately directed towards an equalisation of the 

 various standards of weight in use throughout the kingdom. 

 He observed, that 



it is well known that in the London markets the mode of 

 calculating the weight of both sheep and cattle is by the stone 

 of 8 Ibs. ; in the North and East parts of England by the stone 

 of 14 Ibs. ; and in the South, West, and North- West parts of 

 England, as well as Wales, by the score of 20 Ibs. 



Very early in the nineteenth century tables for calcu- 

 lating the weight of cattle by measurement were certainly 

 in existence. In the third volume of the Royal Agri- 

 cultural Society's Journal, published in 1842, Mr. C. 

 Hildyard, of Thorpeland, near Northampton, wrote a 

 letter to Mr. Pusey, in which he remarked that thirty-five 

 years previously he had met with computation tables, 

 which he corrected and amplified in a small " ready- 

 reckoner," printed for private circulation. This appeared 

 in 1814. Shortly afterwards Dr. Wollaston, at the 

 suggestion of Earl Spencer, constructed a sliding-rule, 

 showing the weights in stones of 14 and 8 Ibs. Gary's 



