Baker

BAKER, a person whose occupation or business is to prepare bread, or to reduce meal of any kind, whether simple or compound, into bread, biscuit, &c. It is not known when this very useful business first became a particular profession. Ba kers were a distinct body of people in Rome, nearly two hundred years before the christian mra, 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 al lowed to withdraw. They held their ef fects in common, without enjoying any power of parting with them. Each bake house had a patron, who had the super intendency 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 occasion ally one of the body was admitted among the senators. Even by our own statutes, the bakers are declared not to be handi crafts; and in London they are under the particular jurisdiction of the lord mayor and aldermen, 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 wheaten, and the household: these differ only in degrees of purity : and the loaves must be marked with a W or H, or the ba ker is liable to suffer a penalty. The pro cess 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 wa ter, cold in summer, hot in winter, and temperate between 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 di rected 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 avoir dupois 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 offence he may now be fined, at the will of the magistrates, in any sum not less than one shilling, or more than five shillings, for every ounce wanting ; such bread being complained of, and weighed, in the presence of the magis trate, within twenty.four hours after it is baked, because bread loses in weight by keeping. It is said that scarcely any na tion lives without 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 nine, which seems to be used not so much on account of the nourishment to be ob tained 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 be tween two hollow stones. See BISCUIT. BAL}ENA, the whale, in zoology, a ge nus of the Maminalia class, belonging to the order of Gem. The characters of this genus are these : the balxna, in place of teeth, has a horny plate on the upper jaw, and a double fistula or pipe for throwing out water. There are six species : Balxna 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 longitu.. dinal folds or rugs. It frequents the northern ocean. The length of one taken on the coast of Scotland, as remarked 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. One was taken a few years since near Reedy Island in the Delaware river, and was exhibited in Philadelphia. Ialxna 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 her rings. Balxna 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 some times found in the northern seas ninety feet in length, but formerly they were taken of a much greater size, when the captures were 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 disproportion ed 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 composed of a very soft spongy fat, ca pable 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 orifi ces, through which it spouts water to a vast height, and with a great noise, espe cially when disturbed or wounded ; the eyes are placed towards the back of the head, being the most convenient situation for enabling 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 ill' less perfection ; for they are warned at a great distance of any danger preparing against them. It is true, in deed, that the external organ of hearing is not perceptible, for this might only em barrass them in their natural element ; but as soon as the thin scarff skin is re moved, a black spot is discovered behind the eye, and under that is the auditory ca nal that leads to a regular apparatus for hearing. In short, the animal hears the smallest sounds at very great distances, and at all times, except when it is spout ing water, which is the time that the fish ers approach to strike it. What is called whalebone adheres to the upper jaw, and is formed of thin parallel laminae, some of the longest four yards in length; of these there are commonly 350 on each side, but in very old fish more. They

breed only once in two years. Their fidelity to each other exceeds whatever we are told even the constancy of birds. Some fishers, as Anderson, in forms us having struck one of two whales, a male and a female, that were in compa ny together, the wounded fish made a long and terrible resistance ; it struck down a boat with three men in it, with a single blow of its tail, by which all went to the bottom. The other still attended its companion, and lent it every assist ance ; till at last, the fish that was struck sunk under the number of its wounds ; while its faithful associate, disdaining to survive the loss, with great bellowing, stretched itself upon the dead fish, and shared its fate. The whale goes with young nine or ten months, and is then fatter than usual, particularly when near the time of bringing forth. It is said that the embryo, when first perceptible, is about seventeen inches long, and white ; but the cub, when excluded, is black, and about ten feet long. She generally pro duces one young one, and never above two When she suckles her young, she throws herself on one side on the surface of the sea, and the young one attaches itself to the teat. Nothing can exceed the tenderness of the female for her off spring. Even when wounded, she still clasps her young one ; and when she plunges to avoid danger, takes it to the bottom ; but rises sooner than usual, to give it breath again. The young ones continue at the breast for a year, during which time they are called, by the sailors, short-heads. They are then extremely fat, and yield above fifty barrels of blub ber. The mother at the same time is equally lean and emaciated. In the year 1814, one of this species was killed, that had made its way up the Delaware river, and grounded in shoal water near the falls ; it proved to be a young one, and was exhibited in Philadelphia. Balxna physalus, or fin fish, is distinguished from the common whale by a fin on the back, placed very low and near the tail. The length is equal to that of the common kind, but much more slender. It is fur nished with whalebone in the upper jaw, mixed with hairs, but short and knotty, and of little value The blubber also in the body of this kind is very inconsidera ble. These circumstances, added to its extreme fierceness and agility, which ren der the capture very dangerous, cause the fishers to neglect it. The natives of Greenland, however, hold it in great esteem, as it affords a quantity of flesh, which, to their palate, is very agreeable. The lips are brown, and like a twisted rope ; the spout hole is seemingly split in the top of its head, through which it blows water with much more violence, and to a greater height, than the common whale. The fishers are not very fond of seeing it, for on its appearance the others retire out of those seas. It feeds on her ring and small fish. Inoffensive as the whale is, it is not without enemies. There is a small animal of the shell-fish kind, called the whale-louse. that sticks to its body, as we see shell sticking to the foul bottom of a ship. This insinuates itself chiefly under the fins; and whatever ef forts the great animal makes, it still keeps its hold, and lives upon the fat, which it is provided with instruments to arrive at. The sword-fish, however, is the whale's most terrible enemy. At the sight of this little animal, the whale seems agitated in an extraordinary man ner, leaping from the water as if with affright : whenever it appears, the whale perceives it at a distance, and flies from it in the opposite direction. The whale has no instrument of defence, except the tail ; with that it endeavours to strike the enemy ; and a single blow taking place would etiectually destroy its adversary ; but the sword-fish is as active as the other is strong, and easily avoids the stroke ; then bounding into the air, it falls upon its enemy, and endeavours not to pierce with its pointed beak, but to cut with its toothed edges. The sea all about is soon dyed with blood, proceeding from the wounds of the whale ; while the enor mous animal vainly endeavours to reach its invader, and strikes with its tail against the surface of the water, making a report at each blow louder than the noise of a cannon. There is still another powerful enemy to this fish, which is called the oria, or killer. A number of these are said to surround the whale in the same manner as dogs get round a bull. Some attack it with their their teeth behind ; others at tempt it before : until at last the great animal is torn down, and its tongue is said to be the only part they devour when they have made it their prey. But of all the enemies of these enormous fishes, man is the greatest ; he alone destroys more in a year than the rest in an age, and actually has thinned their numbers in that part of the world where they are chiefly sought. At the first discovery of Greenland, whales, not being used to be disturbed, frequently came into the very bays, and were accordingly killed almost close to the shore ; so that the blubber, being cut off, was immediately boiled into oil on the spot. The ships, in those times, took in nothing but the pure oil and the whale bone, and all the business was executed in the country ; by which means a ship could bring home the product of many more whales, than she can according to the present method of conducting this trade. The fishing also was then so plen tiful, that they were obliged sometimes to send other ships to fetch off the oil they had made, the quantity being more than the fishing ships could bring away. But time and change of circumstances have shifted the situation of this trade. The ships coming in such numbers from Holland, Denmark, Hamburg, and other northern countries, all intruders upon the English, who were the first discoverers of Greenland, the whales were disturbed; and gradually, as other fish often do, for saking the place, were not to be killed so near the shore as before ; but are now found, and have been so ever since, in the openings and space among the ice, where they have deep water, and where they go sometimes a great many leagues from the shore. 'The whale-fishery be gins in May, and continues all June and July : but whether the ships have good or bad success, they must come away, and get clear of the ice, by the end of August. There are several whale fishe ries on the coast of the United States, and two or three of these animals are takes annually as far south as Great Egg Har bour. See Plate I. Piscas, fig. 5. WHALE