; from which making the like deductions as in the foregoing case, the average price of the quarter of eight bushels of middle wheat comes out to have been L1 19s. 6d., or about seven ounces and two-thirds of an ounce of silver.

3. Third Period

Between 1630 and 1640, or about 1636, the effect of the discovery of the mines of America in reducing the value of silver appears to have been completed, and the value of that metal seems never to have sunk lower in proportion to that of corn than it was about that time. It seems to have risen somewhat in the course of the present century, and it had probably begun to do so even some time before the end of the last.

From 1637 to 1700, both inclusive, being the sixty-four last years of the last century, the average