ed itself as
it existed immediately before the catastrophe which overwhelmed it,
nearly two thousand years ago. It presented, to the modern world, the
perfect picture of the form and structure of an ancient Roman city. The
interior of its habitations, shops, baths, theatres, and temples, were
all disclosed, with many of the implements used by the workmen in their
various trades, and the materials on which they were employed, when the
doomed city was covered with the lavian stream.

70. AMONGST THE MOST ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS of the kitchen are scales or
weighing-machines for family use. These are found to have existed among
the ancients, and must, at a very early age, have been both publicly and
privately employed for the regulation of quantities. The modern English
weights were adjusted by the 27th chapter of Magna Charta, or the great
charter forced, by the barons, from King John at Runnymede, in Surrey.
Therein it is declared that the weights, all over England, shall be the
same, although for different commodities there were two different kinds,
Troy and Avoirdupois. The origin of both is taken from a grain of wheat
gathered in the middle of an ear. The standard of measures was
originally kept at Winchester, and by a law of King Edgar was ordained
to be observed throughout the kingdom.

[Illustration: _Fig_. 19.]

[Illustration: _Fig_. 20.]

Fig. 19 is an ancient pair of common scales, with two basins and
a movable weight, which is made in the form of a head, covered
with the pileus, because Mercury had the weights and measures
under his superintendence. It is engraved on a stone in the
gallery of Florence. Fig. 20 represents a modern
weighing-machine, of great convenience, and generally in use in
those establishments where a great deal of cooking is carried
on.

71. ACCOMPANYING THE SCALES, or weighing-machines, there should be
spice-boxes, and sugar and biscuit-canisters of either white or japanned
tin. The covers of these should fit tightly, in order to exclude the
air, and if necessary, be lettered in front, to distinguish them. The
white metal of which they are usually composed, loses its colour when
exposed to the air, but undergoes no further change. It enters largely
into the composition of culinary utensils, many of them being entirely
composed of tinned sheet-iron; the inside of copper and iron vessels
also, being usually what is called _tinned_. This art consists of
c