To find the number of bushels of apples, potatoes, etc., in a bin, multiply the length, breadth and thickness together; then multiply by eight and point off one figure in the answer for decimals.

Three and one-half barrels of lime will do one hundred yards of plastering, two coats. Two barrels will do one coat. One barrel will lay one thousand bricks. To every barrel of lime estimate about five-eighths yards of good sand for plastering and brick work.

Wheat from the time it is threshed will shrink two quarts to the bushel, or six per cent in six months. One hundred bushels of corn husked in November will shrink to eighty by March. Potatoes will rot and shrink thirty-three per cent of value from October to June.

Shekel (Heb., from shakal, "to weigh"), was originally a certain standard weight in use among the ancient Hebrews, by which the value of metals, metal vessels and other things was fixed. Gradually it became a normal piece of money, both in gold and silver, marked in some way or other as a coin, although not stamped. The gifts to the sanctuary, the fines, the taxes, the prices of merchandise are all reckoned in the Old Testament by the shekel, not counted, but weighed.

Troy-weight seems to have taken its name from a weight used at the fair of Troyes, an important center of commerce during the middle ages. Like Cologne, Toulouse and other towns, Troyes may have had its own special system of weights. A troy pound (of what value is unknown) is first mentioned in Britain in 1414, long before which period the standard pound of twelve ounces, as well as another pound of twelve ounces (the Tower pound), was in use. The term "troy" was first applied to the standard pound in 1495, but at the same time no change seems to have been made in its value, and it continued, as before, to be exclusively employed by the dealers in the precious metals, gems and drugs. The troy pound contains twelve ounces, each ounce twenty pennyweights, and each pennyweight twenty-four grains; thus the pound contains 5,760 grains, and is to the avoirdupois pound as 144 to 175, while the troy ounce is to the avoirdupois ounce as 192 to 175. (The apothecaries' ounce and pound are now practically obsolete; drugs are bought and sold by avoirdupois, though compounded by apothecaries' weight.) The old English pound, to which the term troy was afterwards applied, was doubtless the pound of silver; and the Tower pound of twelve ounces differed from it only by three-fourths of an ounce.