and that no gas was sent into the adjoining parish of Birmingham.--A
writer in _Mechanics' Magazine_ for 1829, who signed his name as "A.
Taydhill, Birmingham," suggested that floor carpets should be utilized
as maps where with to teach children geography. The same individual
proposed that the inhabitants of each street should join together to buy
a long pole, or mast, with a rope and pulley, for use as a fireescape,
and recommended them to convey their furniture in or out of the windows
with it, as "good practice."--A patent was taken out by Eliezer Edwards,
in 1853, for a bedstead fitted with a wheel and handle, that it might be
used as a wheelbarrow.--Sergeant Bates, of America, invaded Birmingham,
Nov. 21, 1872, carrying the "stars and stripes," as a test of our love
for our Yankee cousins.

~Funeral Reform.~--An association for doing away with the expensive
customs so long connected with the burying of the dead, was organised in
1875, and slowly, but surely, are accomplishing the task then entered
upon. At present there are about 700 enrolled members, but very many
more families now limit the trappings of woe to a more reasonable as
well as economical exhibit of tailors' and milliners' black.

~Furniture.~--Judging from some old records appertaining to the history
of a very ancient family, who, until the town swallowed it up, farmed a
considerable portion of the district known as the Lozells, or Lowcells,
as it was once called, even our well-to-do neighbours would appear to
have been rather short of what we think necessary household furniture.
As to chairs in bedrooms, there were often none; and if they had
chimnies, only movable grates, formed of a few bars resting on "dogs."
Window-curtains, drawers, carpets, and washing-stands, are not,
according to our recollection, anywhere specified; and a warming-pan
does not occur till 1604, and then was kept in the bed-room. Tongs