B A K 
B/H 
)€)4 
the county, over which the lord of the liberty 
appoints a bailiff, such as the bailiff of West- 
minster. 
BAI LS, cl rk of the, is an officer belong- 
ing to the court of king’s-bench : he tiles 
the bail-pieces taken in that court, and at- 
tends for that purpose. 
BAIOCAC), a copper coin, current at 
Rome, and throughout the whole state of the 
church, ten of which make a julio, and an 
hundred a Roman crown. 
BAIRAM, in the Mahometan customs, a 
yearly festival of the Turks, which they keep 
a: ter the fast of ramazan. 
The Mahometans have two bairams, the 
great and the little. The little bairam continues 
tor three days, and is seventy days after the 
hrst, which follows immediately after the ra- 
mazan. During the bairam the people leave 
their work for three days, make presents to 
one another, and spend the time with great 
manifestations of jov. If the day after ra- 
mazan should prove so c loudy as to prevent 
the sight of the new moon, the bairam is put 
off to the next day, when it is kept, even if 
tiie moon should still be obscured. When 
they celebrate this feast, after numerous ce- 
remonies or rather strange mimicries, in 
their mosque, it is concluded with a solemn 
prayer against the infidels, to extirpate Chris- 
tian princes, car to arm them against one an- 
other, that they may have an opportunity to 
extend the limits of their law. 
BAITING is applied to the act of smaller 
or weaker beasts attacking and harassing 
greater and stronger ones. Bulls and beurs 
are baited by mastiffs, or bull-dogs. The 
practice of bull-baiting, and other sports of 
tiie same kind, which cannot be too strongly 
reprobated, may be traced to an early period 
of our history. In tiie twelfth century, it was 
a common practice on every holiday. In 
tiie reign of Henry VIII. many herds of 
bears were maintained for the purpose of 
baiting. Queen Mary had a great exhibition 
of bear-baiting immediately after mass, with 
which to entertain her sister Elizabeth, then 
a prisoner in Hatfield house ; and the same 
princess, soon- after her accession to the 
throne, entertained the foreign ambassadors 
with the baiting of bulls and bears. The cus- 
tom of bull-bailing was most ingeniously de- 
fended by Mr. Windham in the house of 
commons in the session of 1803, when a bill 
was brought in to stop that inhuman practice. 
Whales are baited by a kind of fish called 
oriie, or killers, ten or twelve of which will 
attack a young whale at once, and not leave 
him till he is killed. Phil. Trans. No. 287. 
BAJULUS, an antient officer in the court 
of the* Greek emperors. 
BAKER, a person whose occupation or bu- 
siness is to prepare bread, or to reduce meals 
of any kind, whether simple or compound, 
into bread,, biscuits, &c. 
It is not known when this very useful bu- 
siness first became a particular profession. 
Bakers were a distinct body of people in 
Borne nearly two hundred years before the 
Christian sera, and it is supposed that they 
came from Greece. To these were added a 
number of freemen, who were incorporated 
into a college, from which neither they nor 
their children were allowed to withdraw. 
They held their effects in common without en- 
joying any power of parting with them. Each 
bakehouse had a pair on, who had the super- 
B A K 
intendency of it ; and one of the patrons had 
the management of the others, and the care 
of the college. So respectable were the ba- 
kers at Rome, that occasionally one of the 
body was admitted among the senators. 
Even by our own statutes the bakers are 
declared not to be handicrafts; and in Lon- 
don they are under the particular jurisdiction 
of the lord-mayor and aldermen, w ho fix the 
price of bread, and have the power of fining 
those who do not conform to their rules. 
Bread is made of Hour mixed and kneaded 
with yeast, water, and a little salt. It is 
known in London under two names, the 
white or zuheaten, and the household : these 
differ only in degrees of purity : and the 
loaves must be marked with a \Y or H, or the 
baker is liable to suffer a penalty. 
The process of bread-making is thus de- 
scribed : — To a peck of meal are added a 
handful of salt, a pint of yeast, and three 
quarts of water, cold in summer, hot in winter, 
and temperate between the two. The w hole 
being kneaded, will rise in about an hour; it 
is then moulded into loaves, and put into the 
oven to hake. 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 
directed in this by the magistrates, whose 
rules they are bound to follow. By these the 
peek-loaf of each sort of bread must weigh 
seventeen pounds six ounces avoirdupois 
weight, and smaller loaves in the same propor- 
tion. Every sack of Hour is to weigh two hun- 
dred and a half; and from this there ought to 
he 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 lined, at the 
will of the magistrate, in any sum not less 
than one shilling, nor more than five shillings 
for every ounce wanting ; such bread being 
complained of and w eighed in the presence 
of the magistrate within twenty-four hours after 
it is baked, because bread loses in weight by 
keeping. 
It is said that scarcely any nation lives with- 
out 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 he used not 
so much on, account of the. nourishment to be 
obtained from it, as for thesake 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 
between two hollow stones. 
The process of biscuit-baking, as practised 
at the victualing-office at Deptford, is cu- 
rious and interesting. The dough, which 
consists of flour and water only, is worked by 
a large machine. It is then handed over to a 
second workman, who slices it with a large 
knife for the bakers, of whom there are five. 
The first, or the moulder, forms the biscuits' 
two at a time ; the second, or marker ,. stamps 
and throws them to the splitter, wflio separate!! 
the two pieces, and puts them under t lie 
hand of tiie chucker, the man that supplies 
the oven, whose work of throw ing the bread 
on the peel must be so exact, that he cannot 
look off for a moment. The fifth, or the de- 
positee, receives the biscuits on the peel, and 
arranges them in the oven. All the men 
work with the greatest exactness, and are, in 
truth, like parts of the same machine. The 
business is to deposit in the oven seventy 
biscuits in a minute ; and this is accomplished 
w ith the regularity of a clock, the clacking of 
the peel operating like the motion of the pen- 
dulum. There are twelve ovens at Dept- 
ford, and each will furnish daily bread for 
2040 men. 
The bakers of London make a distinct com- 
pany, the nineteenth in order. 
BALTIN A, the whale, in zoology, a genus 
of the mammalia class, belonging to the order 
of ceti. The characters of this genus are 
these : the balama, in place of teeth, lias a 
horny plate on the upper jaw, and a double 
fistula or pipe for throwing out water. There 
are four species : viz. 
1. Balena-a bo-ops, the pike-headed whale, 
lias a double pipe in its snout, three fins, and j 
hard horny ridge on its back. The belly is full 
of longitudinal folds or ruga?. It frequents the 
northern ocean. The length of one taken on 
the coast of Scotland, as remarked by sis' 
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 tlian that of 
other whales. 
2. Balama 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 herrings. 
3. Baliena mysticetus, the common or great 
Greenland whale, which has no fin on the 
back. This is the largest of all animals; it is 
even at present sometimes found in the north- 
ern seas ninety feet in length; but formerly 
they were taken of a much greater size, 
when the captures w ere 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 disproportioned 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 com- 
posed of a very soft spongy fat, capable 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 orifices, through which it spouts 
water to a vast height, and with a great noise, 
especially when disturbed or wounded; the 
eyes are placed towards the back of the head, 
being the most convenient situation for en- 
abling them to see both before and behind 
as also to see over them, where their food is 
principally found. They are guarded by 
eye-lids and eye-lashes, as in quadrupeds 
and the animals seem to be very sharp- 
sighted. Nor is their sense of hearing in 
less perfection ; for they are warned at a 
great distance of any danger preparing against 
them. It is true, indeed, that the external 
organ of hearing is not perceptible, for this, 
might only embarrass them in their natural 
element ; but as soon &> the thin scarf-skin. 
