pence halfpenny per quart, the profit is surely so large as ought to prevent even the smallest adulteration. But when it is considered how greatly it is reduced by water, and impregnated by worse ingredients, it is much to be lamented that no method has yet been devised to put a stop to the many scandalous frauds and impositions in general prac tice, with regard to this very necessary article of human sustenance.

It is certainly an object well deserving the particular consideration of the legislature. It cannot be doubted, that many persons would be glad to make some addition to the price now paid for it (high as that price is) provided they could, for such increased price, procure so useful an article in domestic economy perfectly genuine.

Not satisfied with the profit here stated, which, considering the difference of measure, is above 100. per cent. it is a common practice with the retailers of this useful article to carry the milk first home to their own houses, where it is set up for half a day, when the cream is taken from it, at least all that comes up in that time, and it is then sold for new milk. By which means, what is delivered in the morning is no other than the milk of the preceding afternoon, deprived of the cream it throws up by standing during that time. By this means a farther considerable profit accrues to the retailer, and the milk is greatly reduced in point of strength and quality. This cream, poor as it is, they again mix with flower, chalk, and perhaps other more baneful ingredients, and yet it finds a ready market in the metropolis. Middleton.

Five or six men only are employed in attending near three hundred cows. As one woman cannot milk above eight or nine cows twice a day, that

part

part of the business would necessarily be attended with considerable expence to the cow-keeper, were it not that the retailer agrees for the produce of a certain number of cows, and takes the labour and expence of milking on himself.

Every cow-house is provided with a milk-room (where the milk is measured and served out by the cow-keeper) and this room is mostly furnished with a pump, to which the retail dealers apply in rotation; not secretly, but openly before any person that may be standing by, from which they pump water into the milk vessels at their discretion. The pump is placed there expressly for that purpose, and indeed is very seldom used for any other.

A considerable cow-keeper in Surry has a pump of this kind, which goes by the name of the Famous Black Cow (from the circumstance of its being painted black) and is said to yield more than all the rest put together.

Where such a pump is not provided for them things are much worse, for in that case the retailers. are not even careful to use clean water. Some of them have been seen to dip their pails in a common horse-trough. And what is still more disgusting, though equally true, one cow-house happens to stand close to the edge of a stream, into which runs much of the dung, and most of the urine of the cows, and even in this stream, so foully impregnated, they have been observed to dip their milk. pails.

A cow-keeper informs me, that the retail milk dealers are for the most part the refuse of other employments, possessing neither character, decency of manners, nor cleanliness.

No person could possibly drink of the milk, were they fully acquainted with the filthy manners of these dealers in it.

The

The same person suggests, as a-remedy for these abuses, that it would be highly proper for every retail milk dealer to be obliged to take out an annual licence from the magistrates; which licence should he granted only to such as could produce a certificate of good conduct, signed by the cow-keeper and a certain number of their customers; and also on their being sworn to sell the milk pure and unadulterated. Middleton.

See CHEATS, FORGERIES, SHARPERS, &c.

GALLOWS,

An instrument of punishment, whereon persons convicted capitally of felony, &c. are executed by hanging.

Among our ancestors it was called furca,* fork, a name by which it is still denominated abroad, par. ticularly in France and Italy. In this latter country the reason of the name still subsists, the gallows being a real fork drove into the ground across the legs, whereof is laid a beam, to which the rope is

tied.

*The forca, used by the Romans as an instru ment of punishment, was a piece of timber resembling a fork. This punishment was of three kinds. the first only ignominious, when a master, for small offences, forced a servant to carry a forca on his shoulders about the city. The second was penal, when the party was led about the circus, or other place, with the furca about his neck, and whipped all the way. The third was capital, when the malefactor, having his head fastened on the furca, was whipped to death..

The present machine, called a gallows, for hanging criminals, consists of a beam across two pillars of wood, between which pillars, on the beam, the criminals are suspended. Formerly malefactors were hung at Tyburn; but it being found that the procession created idleness, instead of having the desired effect, they afterwards suffered before the debtors' door, Newgate. A moveable machine was therefore contrived for this purpose, consisting of the gallows, as above described, on a kind of a stage, which fell from under the criminals when the signal was given. It has been since judged, that the malefactors, thus suffering, were not sufficiently exposed; besides the occasional moving backwards and forwards this machine was attended with much trouble and noise: malefactors are consequently executed in a more conspicuous part of the Old Bailey; and it is supposed that a permanent gallows will be erected for this purpose in or nearer Smithfield. See EXECUTIONS. Editor.

GUILLOTINE.

This instrument for beheading criminals, now used in France, was originally called the Maiden, of the use and form of which Mr. Pennant gives the following account:

"It seems to have been confined to the limits of the forest of Hardwick, or the eighteen towns and hamlets within its precincts. The time when this custom took place is unknown; whether Earl Warren, lord of this forest, might have established it among the sanguinary laws then in use against the invaders of the hunting rights, or whether it might not take place after the woollen manufacturers at Halifax

began