sold by weight. Thus we see that it is only in a comparatively late epoch that two of the chief commodities on which human life depends for subsistence have been trafficked in by weight. Nothing now remains but man’s clothing, weapons, ornaments, fuel and furniture.
The more primitive the condition of life, the more scanty and rude is the household furniture, and as even in modern times timber is not sold by weight, beyond all doubt the same must hold good in a still stronger degree of a time when wood could be had for the mere trouble of sallying forth with an axe and cutting it. The same argument applies cogently to the question of fuel. For even though coal is now sold by weight, both coal and coke are still sold in some places at least in name by the chaldron, a fact that indicates that it was only when facilities increased for weighing large and bulky commodities that such a practice came into vogue. Similarly, although firewood is now sold by weight on the Continent, beyond all doubt at a previous period it was uniformly sold by bulk, as peat or turf is now sold in Cambridgeshire, in Scotland, and in Ireland.