The Rot in Sheep. 
151 
effects on tlie secretory organs of the body. The liver would be 
chiefly concerned in this process ; but we imagine that any flukes 
wliich might perchance be inhabiting the biliary ducts would 
escape all injury, and would cling to their habitat with undi- 
minished tenacity. 
Considering the importance of the question involved — 
for we have known three ozs. of salt, dissolved in a pint of 
warm water and given to a sheep after two days' fading, to 
produce immediate efforts to vomit and speedy death — we have 
looked closely into the matter, but after considerable research 
have been unable to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion as to 
the exact size of the bushel in Mascall's time. It seems by the 
statutes of Henry III., 1216-72, and also of later kings, to have 
been enacted that the gallon should contain eight troy j)Ounds of 
dry wheat from the middle of the ear, and that all ale, icine, and 
corn should be measured by the same gallon, but which neverthe- 
less appears not to have been done — ale and wine being measured 
each by a different and a smaller gallon than corn. 
Sir H. Spelman (born 1562, died 1641), and therefore con- 
temporary with Mascall, says that the bushel contains four 
gallons of wine while Dr. Barnard, who was born in 1638, 
three years before Sir H. Spelman's death, and who wrote on 
ancient weights and measures, asserts the bushel to be rather 
more than 59 lbs. avoirdupois of common corn (triticum), or, 
allowing for the difference between troy and avoirdupois, to be 
about double the size named by Spelman. 
It further appears that in 1650, the gallon for measuring " drie 
things as come, coals, salt," 6cc., contained 272'25 cubic inches, 
which would give the content of the bushel then in common 
use as 2178 cubic inches. By the Act of 1697 "The Win- 
chester round bushel was to be eighteen and a half inches in 
internal diameter, and eight inches deep," thus fixing the gallon 
at 268"6 cubic inches. 
In 1824 the Imperial bushel was fixed at 2218"2 cubic inches, 
so that it would appear that the bushel of 1650 was intermediate 
in size between the Winchester and the now Imperial bushel, 
containing in round numbers about a pint more than the former, 
and a pint less than the latter ; but whether this was the size of 
the bushel, or one of half that capacity, in use in 1587 is not 
clear. 
The weight of salt varies, depending on the amount of its 
dryness and pulverulent condition ; but taking an average speci- 
men of table salt of ordinary dryness, an Imperial bushel will 
weigh 64 lbs. avoirdupois, while of rough salt, such as in all 
probability was used in Mascall's time, it will weigh 70 lbs. 
Putting the weight at the lowest, viz., 64 lbs., merely for the sake 
