_____ 
BAK 
BAL 
Slid useful life, at his apartments in the 
Strand, on the 25th of November, 1774, 
being then upwards of 70 years of age. 
Baker, a person whose occupation or 
business is to prepare bread, or to reduce 
meal of any kind, whether simple or com- 
pound, into bread, biscuits, &c. It is not 
known when this very useful business first be- 
came a particular profession. Bakers were 
a distinct body of people in Rome, nearly 
two hundred years before the Christian ®ra, 
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 enjoy- 
ing any power of parting with them. Each 
bakehouse had a patron, who had the su- 
perintendency 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 occasionally one of 
the body was admitted among the se- 
nators. Even by our own statutes the 
bakers are declared not to be handicrafts ; 
and in London they are under the particu- 
lar jurisdiction of the lord-mayor and al- 
dermen, 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 wlieaten, 
and the household : these differ only in de- 
grees of purity : and the loaves must be 
marked with a W or H, or the baker is 
liable to suffer a penalty. The process 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 water, cold in 
summer, hot in winter, and temperate be- 
tween 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 directed 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 avoirdupois 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 of- 
fence he may now be fined, at the will of the 
magistrates, in any sum not less than one 
shilling, nor more than five shillings for 
every ounce wanting ; such bread being 
complained of and weighed 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 without bread, or some- 
thing as a substitute for it. The Laplan- 
ders 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 
obtained 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 between two hollow stones. 
See Biscuit. 
BALflENA, the whale, in zoology, a ge- 
nus of the Mammalia class, belonging to the 
order of Cete. The characters of this genus 
are these : the balasna, in place of teeth, 
has a hornv plate on the upper jaw, and a 
double fistula or pipe for throwing out wa- 
ter. There are four species: viz. 1. Ba- 
lsena 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 longitudinal folds or rugae. It fre- 
quents the Northern ocean. The length of 
one taken on the coast of Scotland, as re- 
marked 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. 
2. Balsena musculus has a double pipe in its 
front, and three fins ; the under jaw is 
much wider than the upper one. It fre- 
quents the Scotch coasts, and feeds upon 
herrings. 3. Balaena mysticetus, the com- 
mon 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 northern seas ninety feet in 
length ; but formerly they were taken of a 
much greater size, when the captures were 
