PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES IN THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND, AND IN WALES, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND. LONDON. Martin, the distinguished painter, a few years since, gave publicity to a plan for laying out, improving, and beautifying Hyde and St. James's Parks, and, at the same time, for supplying the north-west portion of the metropolis with pure water from the river Coln. To have secured either part of the scheme would have been worth half a million of money to the country; for the adoption of the whole, scarcely any pecuniary sacrifice (and it would only have been a sacrifice pro tempore) could have been too great. As the English are fond of half measures, we marvel that the inferior half was not accepted, and the superior rejected. However, we had become economists" penny wise and pound foolish "-and nothing was done. Respecting the water, Mr. Martin's plan was, to take the supply at Denham, where the whole body of the Coln meets, and tunnelling through the hill above Uxbridge, proceed at once to Northalt, from thence to London using one bank, and a small portion of the bed of the canal." With that proposition he now combines another: that is, to make the line by which the water is to come to London, serve also for a railway, by forming a roof over the aqueduct, of strength sufficient to support the iron rails, and the carriages to move thereon, the whole distance to Denham, where the railways should branch off, that for the north still using the banks of the canal, and that to the west going across the country to Windsor, and thence to Bristol." The advantages of this scheme are numerous. Mr. Martin - whose views respecting the health of the metropolis are exceedingly important-is also engaged in the formation of a Company (the Thames Conservancy Company) for preventing the pollution of the river. It is proposed to effect this by constructing sewers on the bank of the Thames, in front of all the drains whose contents are now discharged into the stream. A return of 201. per cent. is estimated upon the capital to be in. vested. The usual meeting of proprietors of London Dock Stock has been held for the purpose of declaring a dividend for the last half-year. The Chairman presented a very favourable report of the article should maintain. In pigs there was no alteration in price from the previous quarter's quotation.-Shrewsbury Paper. SUSSEX. Ancient British Canoe in the possession of the Earl of Egremont.-The canoe discovered in a bed of silt at North Stoke, near Arundel, in this county, a few months since, is now at Petworth Place, the Earl of Egremont having caused it to be removed and placed under shelter, that so interesting a relic may be preserved from injury. This canoe is nearly 35 feet in length, 4 wide in the centre, 3 feet 3 inches wide at one extremity, and 2 feet 10 inches at the other, and is about 2 feet deep. It is formed of the single trunk of an oak, which has been hollowed out, and brought to its present shape with great labour; it is evidently the workmanship of a very early period, and in all probability was constructed by some of the earliest inhabitants of our island, before the use of iron or even brass was known; the original tree must have been 15 or 16 feet in circumference. Three projections left in the interior of the boat, appear to have been designed for seats; it is manifest therefore that the persons who constructed this vessel were unacquainted with the art of forming boards. The canoe is so similar to some of those which were fabricated by the aborigines of North America, when first visited by Europeans, that we can have no hesitation in concluding that it was formed in a similar manner; namely, by charring such portions of the tree as were necessary to be removed, and then scooping them out with stone instruments: no doubt this canoe belongs to the same period as the flint and stone instruments called celts, which are found in the tumuli on the South Downs. This boat is now in the state of peat or bog-wood, and we much fear will fall to pieces, if not imbued with oil, coal-tar, or some similar ingredient. YORKSHIRE. It is, probably, very little known that an extensive manufacture is carried on in this neighbourhood, by which old rags are made into new cloth. Yet such is the fact, and to so great an extent does this manufacture prevail, that at least five millions pounds weight of woollen rags are yearly imported from Germany and other parts for this purpose. The rags are subjected to a machine which tears them in pieces, and reduces them nearly to their primitive state of wool; and they are then with a small admixture of new wool, again carded, slubbed, spun, and woven; and they make a cloth not very strong, but answering very well for paddings, shoddies, and other purposes of that nature. The ingenuity deserves praise, which thus resurrectionizes cloth, and gives it a second existence. There is nothing whatever of fraud in the manufacture; it is a justifiable economy to make the material go as far as it will. The manufacture is carried on chiefly in the neighbourhood of Batley.-Leeds Mercury. A beautiful tesselated pavement has been uncovered by some workmen at Meux, in Holderness, which was doubtless formerly the floor of the Abbey Church. IRELAND. In excavating for the reservoir of the water-works on Cromwell's Fort, the workmen found this week the skeleton of a man and horse alongside each other. The human skeleton, it would appear, was in complete armour when buried there, from the mouldering fragments that were still around it. The breast and lower part of the body was covered with armour somewhat resembling the ancient thorax, and a plain silver ring found on one of the joints of the finger, with the following letters rudely engraven, "NOT. VALV. BVT. VERTV," which probably means "not value but virtue," and which we take to be the wearer's motto, in the old English style. -Limerick Star. Irish Cattle. The following is an account of the numbers of pigs, sheep, cattle, and horses, imported into Bristol from Ireland, during the months of April, May, and June last, as reported in the Bristol Presentment : — Pigs, 37,441; sheep, 1,342; cattle, 738; horses, 97. Arts, Fine. Useful. See Fine Arts See Useful Arts Arundell's Discoveries in Asia Minor, no- Astley and Ducrow, 461 Austin, Sarah, Report of the state of Public Babington, Dr., statue to, 105 Baines's Companion to the Lakes, noticed, Ball, a country one, on the Almack's plan, Bank notes in circulation, 428 of England Branch Banks, 248] and Western Germany in 1833,505 Lander, 402; Mrs. Fletcher, 403; Sir Breadalbane, the Marquis of, his death, 131 British Museum, receipts of, 249, 383 Brougham, Lord Chancellor, and Earl Grey, 166 Brussels, riots at, 130 Brydges, Sir Egerton, his Autobiography, Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau, no- Bunn, Mr., and Mr. Yates, 163 Cabinet alterations, 361 commotion, 499 Campbell's Life of Mrs. Siddons, 471 Chapters from the Note-Book of a Deceased Charities, commission for inquiring into, 272 Cholera, return of, 502 Colburn's Modern Novelists, noticed, 375 Cooke, G. F., and his Keeper, 458 Covent Garden Theatre, performances at, 2 P Crime, machinery of, in England, 77; state Critical Notices of New Publications, 97, Deaths, 133, 270, 406, 542 and Marriages, number of, 87 Dialogues of the Living, No. I. 63; No. II. Diorama, exhibition of the, 243 D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, noticed, Mr. jun., the "Infernal Mar- riage" by, 293, 431 Dobereiner, Professor, discovery of, 114 Douce, Francis, Esq., some account of, 132 Drury Lane Theatre, performances at, 105, 379 Gee, Mr., the case of, 229 Geographical Society, meetings of, 109, 518 Gleanings in Natural History, noticed, 377 Grapes, disease in, 118 Great Britain, state of affairs in, 124, 258, Greenwich Railway, progress of the, 271 Hamiltons, a Novel, noticed, 512 Hemans, Mrs., the Palace of the Maremma Herschel, Sir J., his arrival at the Cape of House of Commons, proceedings in, 126, 393, 531 the late scenes in the, 190 Hudson, incidents on the, 465 Idyls, London, 84 Iguanodon, skeleton of one, 407 on the Hudson, 465 Infernal Marriage, the, 293, 431 Inhabitants of a Country Town, by Miss Ireland and Repeal, 95 Irish Melodies, noticed, 510 Islington, new cattle-market at, 134 Jamieson, Mrs., her Visits and Sketches at Kean, recollections of, 51 and the Kembles, 463 Keats, Admiral Sir R. G., G.C.B., Biogra Kemble and a Dramatic Aspirant, 456 Kemp Town, destruction of the cliffs be- King Lear, as Shakspeare wrote it, 218 Lafayette, glimpses of, and of a few of his Palace of the Maremma, the, 17 Parks, plan for improving the, 543 Philip Van Artevelde, noticed, 373 Poaching and Beer-houses, 136 - Poetry the Palace of the Maremma, by Polish Army, particulars relative to, 130 Pritchard's Natural History of Animalcules, Provincial Occurrences, 134, 270, 406, 543 |