Auxiliary, to the Church Missionary Society, in 1882, gathered £2,133
8s. 6d.; in 1883 (to June both years) it reached £2,774 17s. 8d., of
which £2,336 6s 11d. was from collections in the local churches. The
Auxiliary to the London Missionary Society gathered £1,050, of which
£991 was collected in churches and chapels. The Baptist Missionary
Society was founded in October, 1792, and branch was started here a few
months afterwards, the first fruits totting up to the very respectable
amount of £70. A branch of the Wesleyan Missionary Society was formed
here in 1814 for the Birmingham and Shrewsbury district, and the amounts
gathered in 1882 totalled £4,829 10s. 3d. To the Society for promoting
Christianity among the Jews, the Birmingham Auxiliaries in 1883 sent
£323. There are also Auxiliaries of the Church of England Zenana, of the
South American, and of one or two other Missionary Societies. The Rev.
J.B. Barradale, who died in China, early in 1879, while relieving
sufferers from famine, was educated at Spring Hill College. He was sent
out by the London Missionary Society, and his death was preceded by that
of his wife and only child, who died a few weeks before him, all from
fever caught while helping poor Chinamen.

~Moated Houses.~--The Parsonage, as well as the Manor House (as noted
elsewhere), were each surrounded by its moat, and, possibly, no portion
of the United Kingdom could show more family mansions, and country
residences, protected in this manner, than the immediate district
surrounding Birmingham. Many more or-less-preserved specimens of these
old-fashioned houses, with their water guards round them, are to be met
with by the rambler, as at Astwood Bank. Erdington, Inkberrow, Yardley,
Wyrley, &c. Perhaps, the two best are Maxtoke Castle, near Coleshill,
and the New Hall, Sutton Coldfield.

~Modern Monasteries.~--The foundation-stone of St. Thomas's Priory, at