impending legislation on that, on the foreign cattle traffic, and on rural education. It is plain, we think, that the agricultural world is in this country alive to the many interests involved in its failure or prosperity. Among the more important agricultural events of the past quarter must be named the proposal to re-establish the beet-root sugar manufacture among us. Twenty years ago this was attempted in Ireland, but failed, in some measure, perhaps, owing to the insufficient sweetness of the Irish-grown beet-root; but mainly, it is asserted, because of a faulty and imperfect manufacturing process. Mr. Duncan, a sugar-refiner, dealing with no less than 300 tons of sugar weekly, is about to start the beet-root sugar manufacture in this country, and has advertised his willingness to contract for the purchase of 6,000 tons of beet-root next autumn, at 18s. a ton. His principal condition is that no farmyard manure shall have been put this year upon the land where they are grown. Over-luxuriance of growth is fatal to the development of much sugar in the juice. Purchasing these in October, he would grind them to a pulp, and thereafter press the juice out; boil it with lime, thus coagulating all albuminous matters; throw down the lime in solution, by passing carbonic acid through the liquid; and reduce the residual liquor by evaporation, till 50 per cent. of it was sugar, when it would be conveyed to the sugar refinery for further manufacture. The main difficulty in the way of the profitable growth of the sugar beet in this country is the small weight of root which must not be exceeded. Fifteen tons per acre are a full crop under ordinary circumstances, for the plants should not be more than two and a half pounds in weight, or the percentage of sugar will suffer. An attempt to re-introduce the crop will, however, be made this year; and we understand that contracts have been already made with Suffolk farmers for a quantity of roots sufficient to justify Mr. Duncan in the erection of his manufactory. Agriculture, in so far as it, too, is a trade, has shared in the recent excitement on the subject of co-operation. An association exists which professes to supply its members with agricultural implements and manures at manufacturers' and importers' prices. And even in the direct work of farm management, it has been attempted to make the workmen and the master fellow-labourers, both of them directly interested in the profits of the year. Mr. Lawson, of Blennerhasset, near Carlisle, has tried the principle of co-operation in this latter particular; but it appears that hitherto there have been no profits to divide. And it seems plain that these depend much more directly upon the skill and energy of the master than upon the mere co-operation of his men; which, after all, is better secured by adopting the principle of piece-work pay. ment, so that industry at once meets with its reward, than by offering as its stimulant a share in doubtful profits twelve months hence. The association for supplying cheap implements stands, perhaps, upon a sounder basis, for no doubt the charges made by agents and allowed by manufacturers are an excessive fine on customers; but we suspect that the competition of individual dealers is likely in the long run to make them the cheapest and most efficient agency for distributing these as well as all other kinds of goods to purchasers. A paper by Mr. Maw on "Potatoe Culture," in a recent number of the English Agricultural Society's Journal,' deserves mention here as an example of an elaborate experimental agricultural research. Mr. Maw's experience proves that, the cultivation and manuring being alike, the weight of the crop is proportioned very accurately to the weight of the sets. Full-sized potatoes, from 4 to 8 oz. in weight, planted 10 inches or a foot apart, in rows 2 feet or 26 inches from each other, yield the maximum return. And where the sets were made to average 6, 4, and 2 ounces in place of 8, the crop per acre was found to drop from 26 tons per acre to 15, 14, and 11 tons respectively. Although the plots on which the experiments were tried were small, and the crops recorded almost incredibly large, yet the trials themselves were so numerous and the results so uniform, that the rule seems sufficiently established; and we may consider it as certain that the crop will generally vary as the weight of the sets; and as these are best planted at a certain distance apart, the larger sets are to be preferred. The theory of land drainage has been under discussion recently owing to the assertion that the opening of a shaft to the surface of the land from the upper end of an ordinary drain, giving a direct connection with the air, facilitates the escape of water. This is of course an assertion which can be properly tested only by experiment; but it appears to us obvious that the broad surface and the whole substance of the soil are already entirely under the influence of atmospheric pressure, and that the operating cause in land drainage is plainly the mere weight of water which the land contains pressing downwards everywhere-into any channels, therefore, which may be provided for its escape. The provision of one opening more through which air can find a direct passage, if it will, from the sunlight to the underground channel, seems to us incapable of any power or influence at all on the process of land drainage which may be going on through that channel. The agricultural statistics of the past year have just been published. They are interesting on a comparison with previous publications of the kind, as showing the unexpected changes which have gradually and unnoticed taken place in English and Irish agriculture during recent years. Thus it appears, that during the past ten years the growth of wheat in Ireland has dropped from 544,348 acres to 280,549 acres, and in Scotland from 243,240 acres to 110,609 acres. No such comparison is possible in the case of England, for we have not a ten years' record in her case; but it is plain that such a record is very desirable, as pointing out how agricultural practice is drifting from the old lines without anybody otherwise having the chance of knowing it: so that national risks are gradually being incurred of which no suspicion had otherwise existed. Mr. Caird read a most elaborate and instructive paper the other day on this subject before the Statistical Society, pointing out the many ways in which the annual publication of our agricultural produce must tend to regulate trade, and correct the evils inflicted by misjudgment here upon agricultural as well as other national interests. We place the leading facts of 1866 and 1867 on . record here for annual reference hereafter. POPULATION, AREA, ABSTRACT OF ACREAGE UNDER CROPS, &c., AND NUMBER OF LIVE STOCK IN EACH DIVISION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 2. ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. com M. PAUL GERVAIS has recently published an important work, entitled Recherches sur l'Ancienneté de l'Homme et la Période Quaternaire," illustrated by nineteen quarto plates of figures of implements, ornaments, human bones and skulls, and mammalian remains, from various caves and stratified deposits of the Quaternary period. The scope of this work is very comprehensive, as the author treats the subject from several points of view. After certain preliminary observations, designed to show that the Quaternary period is really entitled to a separation from the Tertiary, M. Gervais enumerates the various kinds of proof which are monly invoked in favour of the pre-historic existence of man in Europe, and then proceeds to subdivide the Quaternary period into four epochs, as follows:-(1.) The epoch of Elephas meridionalis, which can no longer be contested, since M. l'Abbé Bourgeois has discovered worked flints at Saint Prest, but which is difficult to separate paleontologically from the succeeding epoch. (2.) The epoch of Elephas primigenius, characterized by that species, and by Ursus spelæus, Hyæna spelæa, Felis spelæa, &c. (3.) The epoch of the Reindeer, characterized by the fractured remains of that animal. During this period, the animals which were especially characteristic of the preceding epoch appear to have become extinct, and in certain places their bones are found associated with the fragmentary remains of the Reindeer, as well as with the worked horns of that animal. (4.) The epoch of the pile-dwellings, of which the fauna appears to be the same as that of the present day, except that wild oxen and deer, though still existing, then roamed over districts where they are now unknown. This period is posterior to the extinction of the great mammals, and to the retreat of the Reindeer into more northern regions. Our space will not allow us to discuss the author's valuable descriptions of the numerous caverns in France which he has explored, and several of which contain human skulls, nor his original observations on the species of mammalia contained in them; we must pass at once to a consideration of the manner in which the ancient people to whom these skulls belong have been so far modified as to have yielded the French population of the present day. M. Gervais states that the original inhabitants were Celtic; that after the Glacial period, during the long interval which preceded the invasion of Gaul by the Romans, the country was peopled successively by races from the East, chiefly from Asia, of which the tribes appear to have possessed distinguishing characteristics, similar to those spoken of by the ancient historians as characterizing the populations of the several provinces of France at the time of the Roman conquest. From the fusion of these several tribes with the original Celtic inhabitants arose the numerous varieties of people which existed at the latter period. And where the influence of the Roman invasion was least felt the aboriginal races have been preserved in the purest condition, for instance, the Basques. M. Gervais's book contains the discussion of too many large subjects to be thoroughly reviewed in a Chronicle; we therefore refer our readers to the work itself,-a most complete exposition of the subject in all its bearings, as connected with the history of France and of the French people. In the numbers of the Intellectual Observer' for December and January, Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt continues his description of the Grave-mounds of Derbyshire, and their contents. As we stated in our last Chronicle, the greater number belong to the Celtic period, the smallest number to the Romano-British period, and an intermediate number to the Anglo-Saxon. The mounds of the Celtic period were described in the papers which we then noticed; in those now before us, the author describes the few Romano-British tumuli, and those of the Anglo-Saxon period. Mr. Jewitt states in explanation of the fact that so few Roman monuments occur in Derbyshire, that the Romans did not make regular settlements in that county, that they "seldom raised tumuli over their dead, or, in this country, placed any ostentatious monuments over their remains." The interments which have been discovered include examples of burial both by inhumation and by cremation. The articles found in the graves, of course, are not numerous; but they include pottery and glass, coins, fibulæ, armillæ, and other ornaments (of bronze and iron), knives, spear-heads, combs, &c. The Anglo-Saxon period is remarkably well represented, the graves being generally rectangular cists, or pits cut in the ground, to the depth of from two or three to seven or eight feet. Mr. Jewitt gives an interesting account of the burial by inhumation; but it seems that cremation was the dominant practice. With the urns "but few articles, either of personal ornament or otherwise, are found;" but where the body had been placed entire in the grave the objects are numerous, and frequently elaborate, including "swords, knives, seaxes, spear-heads, umbones of shields, buckles, helmets, querns, drinking-cups, enamels, gold, silver, and bronze articles, baskets, buckets, draughtsmen, combs, beads and necklaces, rings, earrings, caskets, armlets, fibulæ, articles for the chatelaine, pottery," &c., examples of which are described by the author. "Pfahlbauten in Meklenburg" is the title under which several reports by Dr. G. C. F. Lisch are being published in a collected form. These reports were originally published in the 'Jahrbuch' of the Society of History and Antiquities of Meklenburg, and two instalments of the collection have now been republished--namely, |