In three days he had weighed one hundred and thirty-two persons of the male sex, and eight women. The average weight of each person I found was, including the women, one hundred and fifty-five pounds. The number of persons measured for their height was sixty-four, and the average tallness of each person, among which number was only one female, was five feet eight inches. The soldiers were of course the tallest. These figures speak well for the London Cockneys. One of the women, a cook, measured six feet, and weighed one hundred and ninety-eight lbs. I gave the venerable statistician a shilling and bade him good-bye, but not before I had received his blessing in fervent tones. [Illustration: COKE PEDDLER.] The consumption of coke purchased from the various gas houses of the city by peddlers and hawkers is enormous. There are about two thousand persons concerned in this street trade, one hundred of whom are women, and the aggregate includes boys. The various gas companies realize a yearly sum equal to six million of dollars from the sale of the coke. The peddlers distribute the coke to their customers in large vans, wheelbarrows, donkey carts, hand carts, and some of these strong limbed, broad chested fellows, carry the coke from door to door in large sacks. A few of the women own routes, and hire boys or men to sell the coke, giving them eight to twelve shillings a week, according to their merits and enterprise as hawkers. Coke is bought by these hawkers at the gas houses at from three to four pence per bushel, and is sold by them again at eight pence per bushel. In giving the rates which I will have occasion to quote from time to time in this work, I shall generally give the prices in British money. Salt is also vended in carts and wheelbarrows like coke, and some of the peddlers of that much desired article for seasoning and preserving food, sell in one day as much as five hundred pounds. The wholesale price to the hawkers is about 2s. 6d. per hundred pounds, and it is sold by them to the poor people in thickly populated districts, at a penny a pound, or sometimes cheaper. Sand is sold in large quantities to the keepers of publics and small shops, and to those keeping stalls in the old markets, at twenty shillings a load, and the sand peddlers pay a license of two pounds per annum. In fact all the London peddlers pay a tax or license of some kind or another. One of the strangest sights in London is the "Bum Boat" of a "Purl," or warm beer seller, who may be found now and then of a dark foggy day plying his vocation on the Thames. Formerly there were hundreds of these beer peddlers upon the river, but I believe that there are but a few, perhaps not more than five or six, who still follow this occupation.