As statutes of 1436 and 1496 repeated this prohibition of any increase of the quarter one may presume that the forbidden practice continued, the increased quarter being called a Vat. But there was another way of evading these statutes; the old story with bad legislation; _Fatta la lege, trovato l’inganno_. It became in many parts customary to give, not a long-quarter, but a long-bushel of 9 gallons, so that 8 long-bushels would make the new quarter-chaldron. It was possibly a relic of this practice which caused the Chester corn-measure to become 70 lb., roughly 62-1/2 lb. × 9/8 = 70·3 lb. Cheshire perhaps benefited by its neighbourhood to Lancashire, which was specially exempted by 13 Rich. II from the penalties for offences against the unity of weights and measures, ‘because in that county it hath always been used to have greater measure than in any other part of the realm.’[28] Yet long-bushels are sometimes the striked equivalents of heaped measure. Footnote 28: Curiously Lancashire still uses the Cheshire acre, and in some parts a pound of butter is a pound + the weight of 2 pennies, formerly the heavy Georgian ounce-pennies, now the lighter bronze coins. But in most parts of the country the attempts to correct stupid legislation were abandoned, and so the Chaldron of 36 bushels fell almost out of use and the Quarter ceased to be a quarter of any measure. In 1707 Bishop Fleetwood (‘Chronicon preciosum’) could only say ‘doubtless a Quarter is a quarter or fourth part of some load or weight.’ And there is a story that Lord Kelvin, asking the head of the Standards Office (giving evidence before a Royal Commission on Weights and Measures) of what a Quarter was the quarter, failed to obtain any light on the subject. And he himself did not know. But since the corn-trade brought back from North America the old ton of 20 centals, the quarter has found its long-lost father. The freight-ton of ships, 40 cubic feet of cargo, contains 32 bushels (at 1-1/4 cubic feet to the bushel), that is 4 Quarters or 2000 lb. of average wheat = 20 centals. 5. COAL MEASURE The Chaldron of 36 bushels is used for the sale of coke and in Northumberland for coal. A ‘keel’ of coal, i.e. the load of the Tyneside lighter known as a ‘keel,’ was, up till the fifteenth century, 20 ‘chaldres,’ the measure of 20 old tons: The old chaldron of wheat, 32 bushels of 62-1/2 lb. = 2000 lb. „ „ „ „ coal, 25 „ „ 80 lb. = 2000 lb.