other roots, a much greater advantage would undoubtedly be obtained in the winter season when so large a bulk of cold and watery food as is often given must not only waste but injure the digestive powers of the animal.

A recently published report of Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert affords a good illustration of the fact that living things have to obey the laws of their nature, and cannot be manipulated by treatment according to the arbitrary will of their cultivator. The experience of many years at Rothamstead has taught that special manurings have hardly any appreciable effect on the composition of the ash of wheat, which maintains its uniformity, whatever variation may have been artificially presented in the mineral food with which the crop has been fed. This fact tallies perfectly with the whole course of agricultural experience in teaching that the farmer cannot with impunity set himself to be the master of his circumstances. If he be wise he will only endeavour to be their intelligent servant, trying to turn them to account, but avoiding the costly and wasteful process of opposing them. A living thing must be preserved in health if it is to yield abundant produce, and with that view it must be treated according to its nature; and so, whether it be plant or animal that is cultivated, the maximum of produce will be obtained not necessarily by presenting it with abundance of the ingredients or elements of which that produce consists, but by taking care simply to provide the conditions of healthy growth, leaving the produce to develop as it may.

Dr. Voelcker's researches into the composition of town milk have lately been published in the columns of the 'British Medical Journal,' which has startled its readers with proof of the scandalous adulterations generally practised by the milk-dealers. Of only one out of ten samples analyzed from as many different shops, could it be said that the milk was pure; though sold at 4d. and 5d. a quart it was really in general worth only from 1d. up to 3d. for that quantity. In one case examination proved that artificial colouring had been added, that one-fourth of the cream had been removed, and one-sixth of water added! In another, the "new country milk" was skim-milk, with one-third water added! In a third, one-fourth of the cream had been taken, and 33 per cent. of water added! Genuine country-milk contains 4 per cent. of fatty matter, 3 per cent. of casein, and nearly 5 per cent. of milk-sugar; but of these three ingredients the figures were 3, 2, 4—1.6, 2.8, and 4.1-1.62, 2.68, and 4.09 respectively-in some of the examples investigated by Dr. Voelcker. And in the second of these instances the price charged was 5d. a quart, and the profit per annum must have been 2007. a year on every ten gallons sold per diem. It is plain that all classes dealing with the shops from which these samples were obtained are being victimized, and the

robbery falls heavily upon the poor. If the results thus obtained represent the average truth, then one milk dealer out of every ten is an honest man! We hear with pleasure that a company is being started in Switzerland for the preservation of milk in the form of cakes, and we are told on good authority that such cakes, dissolved in England, produce beautiful rich milk.

During the recent autumnal meetings of local agricultural societies, the subject of agricultural education, including that of the future tenant-farmer as well as that of the future agricultural labourer, has occupied attention. Members of both Houses of Parliament, and landlords as well as tenant-farmers, have concurred in urging the importance of instructing boys in the principles of the art by which they are to be maintained in after-life; and whether it were Mr. Read, M.P., addressing agricultural labourers at North Walsham, or Colonel Kingscote, M.P., addressing a farmer's club in Gloucestershire, or Earl Spencer and Earl Leicester speaking at an agricultural meeting in Norfolk, the advantages of technical education were not only admitted by them but insisted on. It is in accordance with this opinion that the educational efforts of the English agricultural body are for the future to be confined to the promotion of the strictly professional branches of an agricultural education.

A preliminary statement issued by the Board of Trade, anticipating a fuller report which has yet to appear, announces that there were in England and Wales in corn crops of all kinds this year, 7,941,578 acres, against 7,921,244 acres returned in 1866; and in Scotland, 1,367,012 acres, against 1,366,540 acres last year. The land under wheat is returned for England and Wales at 3,255,917 acres, against 3,275,293 acres in 1866; and for Scotland, as 115,118 acres, against 110,101. The number of cattle in England and Wales is 4,017,799, an increase of about 150,000 within the year; and in Scotland, 979,170, an increase of 40,000. Sheep are returned for England and Wales at 22,097,286, an increase of nearly 6,000,000 over the previous return; but this is owing to the return for 1866 having been required before lambing time, for the purpose of the Cattle Plague inquiry. There were 6,893,600 sheep in Scotland at the date of the inquiry this year.

Among the noteworthy agricultural incidents of the past quarter we may record here the prices reached at a public sale of shorthorn cattle, chiefly yearlings, imported from the United States. Animals of the pure "Duchess" family of shorthorns had been purchased in England ten or fifteen years ago by American breeders, and now their surplus stock are being returned to us, and eight sold by Mr. Strafford at Windsor the other day, averaged 4081. 3s. 9d. a-piece; a young heifer reaching the extraordinary price of 700 guineas!

2. ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.

THE most important event of the past quarter in Pre-historic Archæology is no doubt the opening of the Blackmore Museum, at Salisbury. The value of this museum lies in the fact of its being a special collection of antiquities-characterizing a particular periodwith illustrative modern examples. Mr. William Blackmore stated, at its opening, that the nucleus of this museum is the renowned "Squier and Davis" American collection, which was purchased by him in the year 1864. To this has been added a valuable collection of stone implements from the various caves and drift-deposits of England and the Continent, with a most interesting illustrative series of the modern stone implements at present used by various savage races. Mr. Blackmore has munificently given this remarkable collection to his native town; he has also built a museum for its reception, and has provided for its future maintenance. Its management has been undertaken from year to year by the committee of the Salisbury and South Wilts Museum, with the consent of the Blackmore Museum Trustees, in whom the property is vested. The trustees are three in number, namely, Mr. Blackmore, Dr. Blackmore (brother of the founder, and well known for his researches on the drift deposits and the flint implements contained in them), and Mr. E. T. Stephens: the last two being also the honorary curators. Henceforth those who wish to learn the evidence which is known respecting the antiquity of man and collateral questions connected with it will find this museum a most valuable, and indeed indispensable, aid. It was opened in the beginning of September with great éclat, the proceedings, which occupied two days, including the reading of papers, a conversazione, and the formal presentation at its opening by Mr. Blackmore.

No account of the proceedings of the "Congrès Paléoethnologique" seems to have been published; but Mr. Boyd Dawkins has printed in the Intellectual Observer' for October a paper read by him, entitled "Man and the Pleistocene Mammals of Great Britain." It consists chiefly of an historical account of the various discoveries of flint implements in Great Britain, and especially of his own findings at Wookey Hole. He makes, however, one statement, which it may be useful to reproduce, as showing that these indications of man's coexistence with extinct animals are not so wonderfully abundant as we seem, almost unconsciously, to have been brought to believe:-"Out of the thirty caverns explored in Great Britain, the contents of which I have classified, four only have yielded human remains; while out of forty river-deposits containing mammalia, only three have furnished any trace of man. Had man been very abundant in those days, we might certainly have hoped to have

found his implements more widely spread, and especially as they were fashioned out of a material that is almost indestructible."

In the same and the succeeding number of the Intellectual Observer,' Mr. Jewitt gives the first two portions of a most interesting description of the Grave-mounds of Derbyshire and their contents. He divides them into three divisions, according to their age, namely, the Celtic, the Romano-British, and the Anglo-Saxon, by far the greatest number belonging to the first-named period, and the smallest number to the second. In these two instalments he describes the barrows of the Celtic period, the various modes of interment, and the objects of flint, bone, stone, and pottery found in the graves. The barrows contain interments by inhumation and cremation. In the former case, "the body is mostly found in a contracted position on its side," but occasionally it is found lying at full length. In the latter case, "the remains of the burnt bones, &c., have been collected together, and placed either in a small heap or in a cinerary urn." Referring to the immense amount of heat which must have been used in burning the bodies, Mr. Jewitt asks, “Is it too much to suppose that the discovery of lead may be traced to the funeral pyre of our early forefathers?" The cinerary urns are either inverted over a flat stone, or are upright and the mouth covered by one. When the bones are placed in a heap they are often surrounded by stones. Frequently the interments have been made in cists, and a barrow may contain one or more of these chambers; but sometimes the barrows are formed almost wholly of earth. The flint implements are varied in form, and frequently of exquisite workmanship; the stone implements consist of adzes (celts) and hammer heads, as well as whetstones and other miscellaneous objects. Besides these, are beads, rings, studs, necklaces, &c., of jet; celts, daggers, awls, pins, &c., of bronze; and a variety of articles in bone, including modelling tools, personal ornaments, lance and spearheads, whistles (?), hammers, &c. Not a single article of gold has been found in any Celtic barrow opened in Derbyshire, but a few have been turned up by the plough. The pottery consists of cinerary urns, food vessels, drinking cups, and the so-called incense cups. Mr. Jewitt considers that this pottery has been baked by the action of fire, and with regard to the "Incense Cups," he thinks it probable that they were used to receive the ashes of infants sacrificed at the graves of adults-their mothers, for instance.

The report of the Nottingham Meeting of the British Association, which was published as usual twelve months after date, contains the "Second Report of the Committee for Exploring Kent's Cavern, in Devonshire." The facts made known up to the present time may be briefly summed up as follows:-The present floor of the cave was strewn with immense boulders, which had fallen from the roof, between and beneath which was a deposit of black mould or

mud, from three to twelve inches thick; beneath this was a stalagmitic floor, graduating downwards into a firm stony breccia, and beneath this again a thick accumulation of " cave-earth," of unknown depth, including a large number of angular fragments of limestone, but without any indication of stratification. In the black mould have been found objects of human workmanship in slate, stone, bone, and bronze; a few flint flakes, two fragments of plates of smelted copper, and numerous pieces of pottery. With them were associated bones of various existing animals, such as pig, deer, sheep, badger, fox, numerous rodents, &c.; pieces of charred wood, and shells of several kinds of snails.

Few remains have been discovered in the stalagmitic floor; they consist of terrestrial and marine shells of existing species, and bones of various recent and extinct animals. In the cave-earth a large number of bones of extinct animals have been found, including Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Felis spelæa, Ursus spelæus, and Hyæna spelæa; with these were discovered nearly one hundred flint implements, excluding doubtful specimens and mere chips. This cave-earth has been worked to the depth of four feet, and the Committee have kept a record of what was discovered in each level of one foot deep. The flint implements and bones were most numerous in the first foot below the stalagmite, and the implements of most elaborate workmanship were found in the lowest levels, of three and four feet deep; those from the four-foot level being "the most elaborately finished tools of the cavern series."

Speaking generally as to the relative abundance of implements in the levels, the Committee state that "up to this time each level has been rather less productive than those above it." The explorations of the Committee have been scrupulously made in those portions of the cavern which have not been disturbed by earlier investigators, whose statements they have been able to confirm in every particular, except the asserted occurrence of Machairodus and Hippopotamus, and human bones, which they have not yet met with. We look forward to reading the conclusions at which the Committee have arrived in a future report.

In a pamphlet, entitled 'A Descriptive List of Flint Implements found at St. Mary Bourne, with Illustrations of the Principal Types,' Mr. Joseph Stephens records (at p. 23) his discovery of a spot which had evidently been the scene of flint working during a long period, occupying a small space in an open field, known as Breachfield, on a hill near the village of St. Mary Bourne. In a few visits. he succeeded in finding "more than 100 cores, about 200 arrowhead and spear-head flakes, a score of axes, besides a quantity of so-named scrapers, sling-stones, awls, drills, wedges, hammers, crushers, and a heap of pot-boilers." He states that all the implements are of the "surface-type," and mostly of very rude workman