a kind of bread prepared by the confectioners, of fine flour, eggs, and sugar, and rose or orange water; or of flour, eggs, and sugar, with aniseeds and citron-peel, baked again and again in the oven, in tin or paper moulds. There are divers sorts of biskets; as feed-bisket, fruit-bisket, long-bisket, round-bisket, Naples-bisket, sponge-bisket, &c.

Sea-Bisket, is a sort of bread much dried by passing the oven twice, to make it keep for sea-service. For long voyages they bake it four times, and prepare it six months before the embarkation. It will hold good a whole year.

To preserve sea-bisket from insects, Mr Hales advises to make the fumes of burning brimstone pass through the casks full of bread. Bisket may be likewise preserved a long time, by keeping it in casks well sealed, and lined with tin.

The ancients had their bisket prepared after the like manner, and for the like use, as the moderns. The Greeks called it ἀπὸ δύο πυρῶν, q. d. bread put twice to the fire. The Romans gave it the name of panis nauticus, or capta. Pliny denominates it vetus aut nauticus panis tusus atque iterum cotus. By which it appears, that, after the first baking, they ground or pounded it down again for a second. In some middle-age writers, it is called maxima, maximus, and panis pasimatus. Among the Romans, we also meet with a kind of land-bisket for the camp-service, called buccellatum, sometimes expeditionalis amona, which was baked much, both to make it lighter for carriage, and less liable to corrupt, the coction being continued till the bread was reduced one-fourth of its former weight.

BISCHOF, See BISHOP.