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The U.K. Bible Students Website
The Great Pyramid by John Taylor
1859 (First Addition )
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154 THE GREAT PYRAMID
to the quarter of corn."* Another statute of the following year ordered, " that the measure of a bushel contain 8 gallons of wheat, and that every gallon contain 8 pounds of wheat of Troy weight, and every pound 12 ounces of Troy weight, and every ounce 20 sterlings, and every sterling he of the weight of 32 corns of wheat, that grew in the midst of the ear of wheat, according to the old laws of the land." The sterling here mentioned is of course the pennyweight, for the silver penny of that time weighed only 15 grains Troy. The pound is the Troy pound.
The actual innovation was made by the substitution of the 8 bushels rased and stricken for the bushels which had not been before so treated. By this enactment, the ordinance of the following year was controlled, which provided, " that the measure of a bushel contain 8 gallons of wheat, and that every gallon contain 8 pounds of wheat of Troy weight:" for if the measure was thus stricken, the weight must have been subordinated to the measure, whereas, before that time, the measure was governed by the weight.
By means of the expressions “rased and stricken" we are introduced to a new measure of capacity, called a strike. "To rase" says Johnson, "is to skim, to strike on the surface;" and as applied to the bushel of wheat, it would take away all that portion of corn which constituted the heaped measure. A strike, therefore, by reducing the measure of corn to the level of the brim of the bushel, might be expected to make some considerable change in the weight of the bushel. By the following Tables it will be seen, that the strike of wheat contained only 62 pounds Troy, while the old bushel
* Statutes at large.
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