204 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
to buy their home products in another city, to pay 
carriage both ways, and to pay the octroi at the 
city gates, than it was to send across the street in 
Issoire for the same article. Freedom from com- 
petition at Issoire enabled the quarry-owners to 
fix their own prices at home, and thus to broaden 
the slender margin of profits which came from out- 
side trade. This peculiar condition reached its 
climax when one of Beltran’s wagons from Cler- 
mont left Issoire with a load of millstones, while, 
next day, the same wagon, without unloading, car- 
ried the same millstones back to be used in the 
mills of the Issoire General Company of Flour and 
Meal! The schoolmaster was ecstatic over the 
stimulus thus given to several industries at once. 
It was like killing many birds with one stone. 
But the Issoire Association for the Home Produc- 
tion of Millstones was not satisfied with Clermont 
competition, even in this peculiar form, and an 
increase in the octroi soon put further importations 
out of the question. 
There were also some curious omissions in the 
list, in spite of its length and complexity. An old 
woman, Widow Besoin, who lived near the Cantal 
gate, had five speckled Dominick hens, of which 
she was very fond. These hens were to her a 
source of profit as well as pleasure. She came to 
the mayor with the complaint that her neighbor, 
Farmer Bois-rouge, who lived just outside the city 
gate, brought in the eggs of his chickens free, and 
sold them at prices far below those she was com- 
pelled to charge for the eggs of her hens. The 
Bois-rouge chickens roamed over the whole farm 
