or BISKUIT, 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 aniseed and citron peel, baked again and again in the oven, in tin or paper moulds. There are divers sorts of biscuit, as seed-biscuit, fruit-biscuit, long-biscuit, round-biscuit, Naples-biscuit, sponge-biscuit, &c.

Sea-Biscuit 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 keep good a whole year. To preserve sea-biscuit from insects, Mr Hales advises to make the fumes of burning brimstone pass through the casks full of bread. Biscuit may be likewise preserved a long time by keeping it in casks well caulked, and lined with tin.

The ancients had their biscuit prepared after the like manner and for the like use as the moderns. The Greeks called it *agros, bergos*, or bread put twice to the fire. The Romans gave it the name of *panis nauticus*. Pliny designates it *vetus aut nauticus panis tusus alque ierum coctus*; by which it appears that, after the first baking, they ground or pounded it down again for a second. By writers of the middle ages it is called *paximas, paximus*, and *panis maximatus*. Among the Romans we also meet with a kind of land-biscuit for the camp service, called *buccellatum*, sometimes *expeditionalis amnna*, which was baked much; but to make it lighter for carriage, and less liable to corrupt, the coction was continued till the bread was reduced one fourth of its former weight.