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chemist, has discovered a new species of utility, besides its nutritive powers, in the potatoe; and his discovery has been proved in England by stucco-plasterers. From the starch of potatoes, quite fresh, and washed but once, a fine size, by mixture with chalk, has been made, and in a variety of instances successfully used, particularly for ceilings. This species of size has no smell; while animal size, putrifying so readily, uniformly exhales a most disagreeable and unwholesome odour; the size of potatoes, being very little subject to putrefaction, appears from experience to prove more durable in tenacity and whiteness, and, for white-washing should always be preferred to animal size, the decomposition of which always exhibits proof of infectious effluvia.

According to a very curious calculation, it has been ascertained, that an acre of land planted with potatoes will produce sufficient food for 16,875 healthy men for one meal; while an acre of wheat will not feed more than 2,745. The expence of cultivating the potatoes is estimated at 121. 1s. and that of the wheat at 111. 15s.

In the year 1806, there were grown on moss-land, at Castle Head, never before cultivated, carrots, which in one square yard (tried in several parts of the field) weighed 47lb. Half an acre produced, on the average, 9 tons, 4 cwt. 2 qrs. 16lb. carrots, which, at 4s. per cwt. would amount to 361. 18s. 6d. The quantity of potatoes growing on four statute acres of the same field was 690 bushels. The rows were four feet asunder.

AGRICULTURE.-A great improvement has recently been made in the cultivation of the marsh and

moss lands within the townships of Overton, Middleton, Heaton, and Heysham, near Lancaster, from the discovery of a bed of sea sand of an unknown depth, lying about three feet below the surface of the earth. The farmers dig pits in the form of marl-pits, and after taking off the soil and a stratum of blue clay, about two feet and a half in thick. ness, they arrive at the sand, which being spread upon the surface of the earth, mixes with and loosens the soil, before too stiff for agricultural purposes, and converts it into the best arable land in the neighbourhood, being capable of bearing four or five successive crops of grain without manure.

M. Leroi, who has made many successful experiments in agriculture, advises persons by no means to procure grain for sowing from a soil north of their own land, but from a country south of it; because he says it is a general rule, that the product of seed improves in going from south to north, and that it decreases in virtue in going from north to south.

The Fly in Turnips.-Sir J. W. Jervis, of Ireland, has tried successfully to prevent this wide-spreading mischief, by sowing flour of sulphur with the seed. This, it is found, destroys the ova of the insect, by which the damage is occasioned.

To keep Cows from Corn.-Take a quart of train oil, as much turpentine, and bruised gunpowder; boil them together, and when hot, dip pieces of rags in the mixture, and fix them on sticks in the field. About four are sufficient for an acre of

corn.

Receipt for the management of Sheep, by Mr. Fair, late overseer at Pencaitland.-Immediately after the

sheep

sheep are shorn, soak the roots of the wool that remains all over with butter and brimstone; three or four days afterwards wash them with salt and water; the wool next season will not only be much finer and softer, but the quantity will be in greater abundance.

A Caution to Farmers.-An ingenious surveyor has given the following intimation, which appears to merit the serious attention of every one engaged in agriculture: "I beg leave to recommend every farmer to be guarded against that wellknown shrub the Barberry, which

frequently grows spontaneously in the hedges in many parts of this country; as whole tields of wheat have been blighted by only one of those plants, their effects beginning first in a semi-circle from the plant, and spreading regularly over the whole field. As many persons to whom I have mentioned this circumstance have been very incredulous, I can assure them that I have often, been an eye-witness of the fact; and for their further information of it, refer them to almost every respectable farmer in the counties of Suffolk aud Berks.”

ANTIQUITIES.

874

ANTIQUITIES.

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dispersed in the works of writers of different complexions and parties, that no dispassionate account has been given of it; nor has any been compressed into an uninterrupted narrative. In this attempt I foresee that I shall be obliged to combat some received opinions; but such | must always be the case where historians have implicitly copied each other; for, when traditions have passed muster for three centuries, their verity is seldom afterwards brought to the test."

Having given a history of the life of the great duke of Somerset, who was beheaded January 22, 1552-3,

more than a doubtful act of felony, and which the king's ministers would not allow him to pardon," Mr. Pegge well observes

"After the interest you have taken in Old London, including Westminster, I hope I may be excused in addressing to you an account of a building now no more; but which embraces à larger portion of history than ever fell to the lot of" on a charge which amounted to no a private edifice, when taken with all its concomitant circumstances --I mean Somerset-House; which, having been founded in the middle of the sixteenth century, and begun to be demolished at the latter end of the eighteenth, is now become within the pale of antiquity. That alone, however, is not what places it within my cognizance; for in a very few years after its foundation it became the property of the crown, and has ever since carried with it such royal appendages as may, with no impropriety, bring it under the general title of this work. All that has been hitherto said of it is so very much

"This fatal conclusion of the duke's life, immaterial as it may ap pear to us at this distance of time, had an excellent and invaluable effect on our criminal laws, from which every unfortunate culprit, at this day, receives a very essential benefit. The evidence against the duke consisted merely of written depositions, unsupported by oral testimony, and was withal so weak, that a law was made, in consequence of it, which enacted that witnesses, in all cases,

should

should hereafter be brought face to face with the prisoner, and examined in his presence."

An inquiry here follows, as to the buildings that were demolished, to make room for the intended edifice. "Those which occupied the space on which Somerset House originally stood, were, principally, 1. an inn of chancery, promiscuously called Strand Inn and Chester's Inn; 2. the episcopal house of the bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, then also known by the name of the Bishop of Chester's inn; 3. the episcopal house of the bishop of Landafft; 4. the episcopal house of the bishop of Worcester; 5. the church of St. Mary-le-Strand, and its cemetry; 6. the Strand bridge."

Mr. Pegge gives a particular account of these places respectively; and then proceeds

"What is now a street, called The Strand, was at that time no more than a highway, leading from London westward to the village of Charing, where stood queen Eleanor's cross, and a few houses; from whence, in a right line, you was led on, through open fields, to St. James's house, lately an hospital, but then a royal house. This high-way, being the property of the crown, as such was easily modified to accommodate the king's uncle, and consequently there was little difficulty or hardship upon the subject in the change it underwent by levelling;

and on the whole, perhaps, the road was rendered better by the change. By Stowe's account there was not any current of water under this bridge; "for," says he, in the autograph remaining in the British Museum, "Then had ye, in the high street, a fair bridge, called Strandbridge, and under it a lane, which went down to the Strand, so called from being a basque of the river of Thames §." But here Stowe speaks of it as if it were in his own time, and not with reference to the reign of king Edward VI. or to any prior period. Mr. Maitland]], on the other hand, tells us, that there was a rivulet under the bridge; "for," says he, "a little to the east of the present Catherine Street, and in the High Street, was a handsome bridge, denominated, from its situation, Strand Bridge, through which ran a small water-course from the fields, which, gliding along a lane below, had its influx to the Thames near SomersetStairs."-In this account I should incline to believe Mr. Maitland; because lanes do not often become rivers, though the beds of rivers, by a diversion of their courses, may become lanes."

Our author now enters upon the regular history of Somerset House, as follows:

"Very little can be said of this house in the reign of queen Mary; for, though it had become the property of the crown upon the duke of Somerset's

*“Maitland confounds Chester Inn and Strand Iun; "which, from its neighbourbood to the bishop of Chester's house and the Strand, was indifferently denominated Chester's, or Strand Inn," p. 739.

+"Almost contiguous to this inn, on the west, was the city mansion of the bishop of Landaff." Maitland, History of London, edit. 1759, p. 739.

"The new church is in the patronage of the bishop of Worcester, the west end being opposite to the place where the old church stood.

Bibl. Harl. No. 538."

Ubi supra.

Somerset's attainder, yet had king Edward given it to his sister the princess Elizabeth; and it was during this reign her independent residence when she came to visit the court. Thus, on the queen's accession, Strype says, that "the lady Elizabeth came out of the country to be ready to congratulate her sister, and now her sovereign; riding through London, along Fleet-street, and so to the duke of Somerset's Place,which now belonged to her t." In the progresses made by Elizabeth while princess, I find it styled "Her Place called Somerset Place, beyond Strand Bridget."

Queen Elizabeth, on her way to Westminster, at her accession to the crown, resided nearly three weeks at Somerset House.

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Queen Elizabeth having two palaces more commodious for her establishment as a sovereign (Whitehall and St. James's), Somerset House still remained a secondary mansion for occasional purposes, and a momentary residence for the queen herself. It operated very well for the reception of the great personages of a certain rank and description; and the queen was not wanting in accommodating some of her own subjects, who were nearly allied to the royal family, with the use of it."

"In the second year of this reign we find, that when the duke of Holstein, nephew to Frederick II. king of Denmark, came hither to treat of a marriage between the queen and

"See the Progresses." "Memorials III. p. 14."

his uncle, he was lodged in Somerst Places. Again, in the year 157Francis duke of Montmorency, mashal of France, visited England with the similar purpose of negociating a marriage between the queen and the duke of Alençon, the youngest brother of Charles the IXth, king i France ||. The marshal continued here nearly a month, where he was entertained at the queen's expence, had an escort of thirty of the queen's yeomen of the guard to attend him, and was lodged in Somerset Place, The count palatine of the Rhine, as ally of the queen, came over hither upon political business, and was honourably received. His stay was from the 22d of January to the 14th of February; when, excepting a few days on his arrival, in which he was entertained by Sir Thomas Gresham, in Bishopsgate-street, he was lodged in Somerset House**. Again: the queen herself is found here for a moment in person, in the year 1583, when she went in state to St. Paul's church, to return thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. If the procession did not begin from hence, it at least terminated here; for my authority says, that the queen turned in the same order by torchlight to Somerset House ++."

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In Norden's MS. copy of his "Speculum Britanniæ," is the fol lowing passage, omitted in the copy of that valuable work printed 1593:

"Somerset Howse, scytuate in the

Strond,

"The term beyond has reference to Hatfield; for the house was a little westward of the bridge, as appears by a Plan of London, about 1558, in the Progresses."

"Strype's Annals, vol. I. p. 195."

"Sully's Memoirs."

"Progresses, from the Lambeth MSS."

**"Ibid. from Stowe's Chronicle."

"Ibid. in the Preface, p. xxiii.”

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