BAK 



BAL 



lowed to withdraw. They held their ef- 

 fects in common, without enjoying any 

 power of parting with them. Each bake- 

 house had a patron, who had the super- 

 intendency of it ; and one of the patrons 

 had the management of the others, and 

 the care of the college. So respectable 

 were the bakers at Rome, that occasion- 

 ally one of the body was admitted among 

 the senators. Even by our own statutes, 

 the bakers are declared ix>t to be handi- 

 crafts ; and in London they are under the 

 particular jurisdiction of the lord mayor 

 and aldermen, who fix the price of bread, 

 and have the power of fining those who 

 do not conform to their rules. Bread is 

 made of flour, mixed and kneaded with 

 yeast, water, and a little salt. It is known 

 in London under two names, the white or 

 wheaten, and the household : these differ 

 only in degrees of purity : and the loaves 

 must be marked with a W or H, or the ba- 

 ker is liable to suffer a penalty. The pro- 

 cess of bread -making is thus described : to 

 a peck of meal are added a handful of salt, 

 a pint of yeast, and three quarts of wa- 

 ter, cold in summer, hot in winter, and 

 temperate between the two. The whole 

 being kneaded, will rise in about an hour: 

 it is then moulded into loaves, and put 

 into the oven to bake. The oven takes 

 more than an hour to heat properly, and 

 bread about three hours to bake. The 

 price of bread is regulated according to 

 the price of wheat : and bakers are di- 

 rected in this by the magistrates, whose 

 rules they are bound to follow. By these, 

 the peck-loaf of each sort of bread must 

 weigh seventeen pounds six ounces avoir- 

 dupois weight, and smaller loaves in the 

 same proportion. Every sack of flour is 

 to weigh two hundred and a half ; and 

 from this there ought to be made, at an 

 average, twenty such peck loaves, or 

 eighty common quartern loaves. If the 

 bread was short in its weight only one 

 ounce in thirty-six, the baker formerly 

 was liable to be put in the pillory ; and 

 for the same offence he may now be fined, 

 at the will of the magistrates* in any sum 

 not less than one shilling, or more than 

 five shillings, for every ounce wanting ; 

 such bread being complained of, and 

 weighed, in the presence of the magis- 

 trate, within twenty-four hours after it is 

 baked, because bread loses in weight by 

 keeping. It is said that scarcely any na- 

 tion lives without bread, or something as 

 a substitute for it. The Laplanders have 

 no corn, but they make bread of their 

 dried fishes, and of the inner rind of the 

 pine, which seems to be used not so much 



on account of the nourishment to be ob- 

 tained from it, as for the sake of having a 

 dry food. In Norway they make bread 

 that will keep thirty or forty years, and 

 the inhabitants esteem the old and stale 

 bread in preference to that which is newly 

 made. For their great feasts particular 

 care is taken to have the oldest bread ; 

 so that at the christening of a child, for 

 instance, they have usually bread which 

 has been baked perhaps at the birth of 

 the father, or even grandfather. It is 

 made from barley and oats, and baked be- 

 tween two hollow stones. See BISCUIT. 

 BAL^NA, the whale, in zoology, a ge- 

 nus of the Mammalia class, belonging 

 to the order of Cetx. The characters of 

 this genus are these: the balaena, in place 

 of teeth, has a horny plate on the 

 upper jaw, and a double fistula or pipe 

 for throwing out water. There are six 

 species : Balaena bo-ops, the pike-headed 

 whale, has a double pipe in its snout, 

 three fins and a hard horny ridge on 

 its back. The belly is full of longitu- 

 dinal folds or rugae. It frequents the 

 northern ocean. The length of one taken 

 on the coast of Scotland, as remarked by 

 Sir Robert Sibbald, was forty six feet, 

 and its greatest circumference twenty. 

 This species takes its name from the 

 shape of its nose, which is narrower and 

 sharper pointed than that of other whales. 

 One was taken a few years since near 

 Reedy Island in the Delaware river, and 

 was exhibited in Philadelphia. Balaena 

 musculus has a double pipe in its front 

 and three fins; the under jaw is much 

 wider than the upper one. It frequents 

 the Scotch coasts, and feeds upon her- 

 rings. Balaena mysticetus, the common 

 or great Greenland whale, which has na 

 fin on the back. This is the largest of 

 all ani7nals ; it is even at present some- 

 times found in the northern seas ninety 

 feet in length, but formerly they were 

 taken of a much greater size, when the 

 captures were less frequent, and the fish 

 had time to grow. Such is their bulk 

 within the arctic circle ; but in the torrid 

 zone, where they are less molested, whales 

 are still seen one hundred and sixty feet 

 long. The head is very much disproportion- 

 ed to the size of the body, being one third 

 of the size of the fish; the under lip is much 

 broader than the upper. The tongue is 

 composed of a very soft spongy fat, ca- 

 pable of yielding five or six barrels of oil. 

 The gullet is very small for so vast a 

 fish, not exceeding four inches in width. 

 In the middle of the head are two orifi- 

 ces, through which it spouts water to a 





