here also the labouring meter only is dismissed; but in Surrey both parties. To prevent confederacy, the labourers are frequently varied.

Coals sold as and for wharf-measure, shall be measured in the presence of a labouring meter, who is empowered to make good any deficiency out of the seller's stock.

Four-pence per chaldron, is to be paid by the wharfinger or seller to the principal meter toward defraying the expences of his office; for this the seller is to receive a ticket, containing the names of buyer and seller, quantity, &c. which ticket the carman must deliver to the first meter upon penalty of 40s. for neglect. Altering, or refusing to deliver it, 10s. Any cart with any quantity of coals exceeding seventeen bushels, sent otherwise; the forfeiture for such offence 101.

A wharfinger, &c. using sacks less than four feet in length and two in breadth, forfeit 57. Labouring meters permitting or using such sacks, pay 40s.

Any wharfinger or dealer directly or indirectly giving any reward, except the allowed 4d. per chaldron, shall forfeit, in London 201. in Westminster and Surrey 50%.

Labouring meters delivering false tickets to consumers, or in other respects offending as above, shall be rendered incapable of their offices, and the principal coal meter (in London and Westminster) shall pay a fine of 40s. In Surrey the fine imposed, in the first instance, on the labourer; but, if not paid within a month, then on the principal.

Labourers suffering coals to be sent away, unmeasured, or not giving notice of their being sent away, to forfeit 51. and be disabled.

The act for the regulation of this trade, which took place in 1803, directs "that the carman is to deliver a ticket, called the vender's ticket before he shoots any of the coals out of his cart or waggon, and that a bushel measure shall be in such cart or waggon, by which the carman is directed to measure, gratis, (under the penalty of 107.) the coals contained in any one sack, which the purchaser or his servant may require, which sack is to contain three bushels,

heaped

heaped up in the form of a cone, the outside of the measure being the extremity of the base thereof." This is to be given besides the meter's ticket.

The last act that passed relative to the coal trade was in 1804; it was enacted that a regular market for vending coals should be established; and for this purpose it was declared that as the mayor, aldermen, and commons of the city of London had agreed with the owners and proprietors of the Coal Exchange, for the purchase of those premises, for the price of 25,600l. and that such purchase should be secured by bonds of 1007. under the common seal of the city, bearing interest of five per cent. per annum, the mayor, aldermen and commonalty were empowered to make good such purchase, in the most ample manner, with the following provision, that nothing in the act should be construed to extend to the requisition that any crimp, factor, &c. should deliver gratis, a copy of the bargain or contract for the sale of coals by him attested, to the buyer and seller thereof, respectively, save and except such copy shall have been de manded by the buyer or seller thereof; and then and in such case such crimp, factor, or other person having the disposal of such coals, shall, and he and she is and are hereby required to deliver such copy, gratis, to such buyer or seller demanding the same."

This act further provides that all penalties under 207. shall be paid within two calendar months, and recovered before any justices of the peace.-Any appeal to be made to and decided by the justices at the quarter-sessions.

We conclude this interesting article, by observing, with the ingenious Dr. Campbell," that the coal trade is in a high degree useful to the national intereft, not only by affording the principal nursery for seamen in the world, but by raising exceedingly the real value, and of course the purchase, of those lands in which coals are found, and those through which it is necessary to pass from the works to the places where they are embarked, and from the general improvements they have occasioned. Thousands of laborious

people

people are maintained in and about the mines, thousands more in conveying them to the ports and on board the ships; to say nothing of those that draw their subsistence from the carriage of them by land. We may join to these the multitudes that obtain their living from the many manufactories in which they are employed, and which could not be carried on but by the help of coals." To all these services the opulence of the city of London has largely contributed.

BILLINGSGATE.

Under the ward which bears this name, we have presumed in the present volume to attempt at an etymology, and in the first volume, under the reign of William III. in 1699, have stated the regulations of the fish market by act of parliament; we therefore only give a few historical notices concerning this place of piscatory avocation.

The antient customs of Billingsgate are upon record in the reign of Edward III: when it appears that every great ship paid for strandage 2d. every little ship with ore-locks. Id. the lesser boat, called a battle, žd. The king was to have ad. for every two measured quarters of corn; of a coomb of corn, Id. every weight going out of the city, d. One farthing for every two measured quarters of sea coal; for every ton of all going out of England beyond the seas by merchant strangers, 4d. and for every thousand herrings, Id. except the franchises, &c. That these payments, however, were made long before Edward's reign is evident from Brompton's Chronicle, where mention is made of them inter leges Ethelredi, an. 1016.

Billingsgate is also a harbour for small vessels which arrive with salt, oranges, lemons, onions, and other commodities; and in summer the influx of cherries from Kent, &c. is wonderful. At this place the Gravesend passage boats, and Margate hoys ply for passengers; the first of these are obliged to depart, under a penalty, upon the ringing of a bell at high water.

An account of fish in use among our ancestors must be curious

VOL. II. No. 39.

curious at this period.; we therefore subjoin a list of those brought to market in the reign of Edward I. who descended even to regulate the prices, that his subjects might not be left to the mercy of the venders:

By the very high price of the pike it is very probable that this fish had not yet been introduced into our ponds, but was imported at this period as a luxury, pickled or some way preserved.

Among those fish, let us observe that the conger is at present never admitted to any table, and to speak of serving up a porpesse, whole or in part, would surprize modern guests Yet such is the difference of taste; both these fishes were in

* See Pennant's British Zoology, iii. article HERRING.

high esteem. King Richard's master cooks have left a most excellent receipt for congur in sauce; and as for the other great fish, it was either eaten roasted or salted, or as broth or furmente with porpesse; the learned Doctor Caius even tells us the proper sauce, and says that it should be the same with that for a dolphin †, another dish unheard of in our days. From the great price that lucy or pike bore ‡, one may reasonably suspect that it was at that time an exotic fish and brought over at a vast expence.

Mr. Pennant confesses himself unacquainted with the words barkey, bran, and betulo. Sard was probably the sardine or pilchard. He is equally at a loss about croplings and rumb; but the pickled baleses were certainly the pholas dactylus of Linnæus, 1110. The balanus of Rondeletius de Testanius, 28, and the dattili of the modern Italians, which are to this day eaten and even pickled.

To this list of sea fish which were admitted in those days, to table, may be added the sturgeon and ling, and there is twice mentioned in archbishop Neville, a great feast of certain fish, both roasted and baked, at present unknown called a thirl poole.

The seal was also reckoned a fish, and with the sturgeon and porpess were the only fresh fish which by the 33d of Henry VIII. were permitted to be brought of any stranger at sea between England and France, Flanders and Zealand.

Mr. Pennant, on passing through Billingsgate, observed on the ground some large pieces of ice, in which, he was told, the salmon from Berwick and others of the northern fishery were packed in boxes. The ice is preserved in icehouses throughout the winter entirely for that purpose.

Mr. Colquhoun, to whose excellent treatise on river police we shall often have occasion to refer, has made several pointed observations on the frauds practised in the fish trade.

"It has been repeatedly remarked," says he, "by successive writers, that there is not perhaps a country in the world better situated to be plentifully and constantly supplied with

Form of Cury. + Caii Opuscula.

002

British Zoology, 3d, 320. fish