254 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK III. fuel sufficient to feed and maintain all its hearths and fires with sweet and 

 '"'^''"^'''"^ wholesome billet? this the ingenious Mr. Nourse seems to demonstrate, 

 and I think not impossible, whilst my Fumifugium^ is long since vanished 

 in aura. There is no very great store of wood about Madrid, where the 

 winters are sharp, and so very piercing, that there is spent no less than 

 four millions of arrobas of charcoal : (every arroba being three quarters of 

 our bushel, and pays to the king a real before it comes into the town, or 

 is sold:) it is charred of the Enzina, or Cork-tree : besides which they 

 use very little fuel-wood, it being exceedingly hard, and, consequently, 

 lasting and sweet. — But to return to the law. 



By the preamble of the statute of 7 Edward VI. one may perceive (the 

 measures compared) how plentiful fuel was in the time of Edward IV. to 

 what it was in the reigns of his successors : this suggested a review of 

 sizes, and a reformation of abuses ; in which it was enacted, that every 

 sack of coals should contain four bushels ; every taleshide to be four feet 

 long, besides the carf ; and if named of one, marked one, to contain six- 

 teen inches circumference, within a foot of the middle ; if of two marks, 

 twenty-thrse inches ; of three, twenty-eight ; of four, thirty-five ; of five, 

 thirty-eight inches about, and so proportionably. 



Billets were to be of three feet, and four inches in length : the single 

 to be seventeen inches and a half about ; and every biUet of one cast (as 



^ Mr. Evelyn wrote a Treatise in I66I, entitled Fumifugiuin, recommending a method to 

 prevent the bad effects of smoke in the city of London. In that work, he considers the 

 great quantities of smoke, which, in large towns, daily ascend into the atmosphere, as likely 

 to produce infectious diseases ; but that opinion does not seem to be well founded. On the con- 

 trary, these acid streams correct and neutralize the volatile alkali, which, in all large towns, 

 arises in abundance from putrid substances, and which, if not corrected, would be productive 

 of disease, by affording a putrefactive ferment to all living bodies under the influence of a 

 putrid disposition : 



Did not the acid vigour of the mine, 

 Roll'd from so many thund'ring chimneys, tame 

 The putrid steams that overswarm the sky ; 

 This caustic venom wovdd perhaps corrode 

 Those tender cells that draw the vital air. 

 In vain with all their unctuous rills bedew'd. 



ARMSTRONG. 



