However, all such regulations belong to later periods of the cities' life, while at an earlier period it was the city itself which used to buy all food supplies for the use of the citizens. The documents recently published by Mr. Gross are quite positive on this point and fully support his conclusion to the effect that the cargoes of subsistences "were purchased by certain civic officials in the name of the town, and then distributed in shares among the merchant burgesses, no one being allowed to buy wares landed in the port unless the municipal authorities refused to purchase them. This seem--she adds--to have been quite a common practice in England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland."(49) Even in the sixteenth century we find that common purchases of corn were made for the "comoditie and profitt in all things of this.... Citie and Chamber of London, and of all the Citizens and Inhabitants of the same as moche as in us lieth"--as the Mayor wrote in 1565.(50) In Venice, the whole of the trade in corn is well known to have been in the hands of the city; the "quarters," on receiving the cereals from the board which administrated the imports, being bound to send to every citizen's house the quantity allotted to him.(51) In France, the city of Amiens used to purchase salt and to distribute it to all citizens at cost price;(52) and even now one sees in many French towns the halles which formerly were municipal depots for corn and salt.(53) In Russia it was a regular custom in Novgorod and Pskov.