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The hobbit (also hobbett, hobbet, or hobed, from (ウェールズ語:hobaid)) is a unit of volume or weight formerly used in Wales for trade in grain and other staples. It was equal to four pecks or two and a half bushels, but was also often used as a unit of weight, which varied depending on the material being measured. The hobbit remained in customary use in markets in northern Wales after Parliament standardized the Winchester bushel as the unit of measure for grain, after which courts gave inconsistent rulings as to its legal status. ==Usage== The hobbit was defined as a measure of volume, two and a half imperial bushels, but in practice it was often used as a unit of weight for specific goods. According to George Richard Everitt, Inspector of Corn Returns for Denbigh in northern Wales, when examined by the House of Commons in 1888, grains were sold by the hobbit, measured by weight. A hobbit of oats weighed 105 pounds, a hobbit of barley 147 pounds, and a hobbit of wheat 168 pounds. The figures in hobbits were then converted to standard imperial bushels for official reporting. In addition to grains, there was also a hobbit of beans at 180 pounds,〔 and in Flintshire, a 200-pound hobbit of old potatoes, or 210 pounds of new potatoes. Around 1600, Welsh farmland was sometimes denominated by its productive capacity or ''measure of seedness'' instead of its physical area, so that in at least one case a plot was registered as "a hobbett of land", that is, large enough to grow one hobbit of grain per year. Already in 1863, the hobbit was used as an example of the "customary confusion in our British weights and measures". An anonymous contributor to Charles Dickens's journal All the Year Round, arguing in favour of the decimal metric system, noted that
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