550 Chronicles of Science. | Oct., 
our sheep and cattle during winter, rape, common turnips, mustard, 
and winter-cabbages, to take the place of a lost Swedish turnip 
crop; and for early spring use, to eke out a deficient mangold crop, 
there is an extraordinary quantity of rye and winter vetches, Italian 
rye-grass, and Trifolium incarnatum, sown. 
The Prize Essay of Mr. Gibbs “On Harvesting Corn in Wet 
Weather,” has been published under the auspices of the Society 
of Arts,* by whom the prize was offered; and, though singularly 
unserviceable during the present summer, it will, no doubt, be of 
use in ordinary seasons. In wet summers it may indeed be the 
means of introducing artificial drymg for many other purposes 
besides corn harvesting. Half-dried grass in difficult weather, 
and sugar-beet and chicory in the short days of October and No- 
vember, may be dried by Mr. Gibbs’s artificial hot-air blast at a cost 
which will not exceed the limits imposed upon the harvest process 
by the ultimate value of the crop. 
Among the agricultural events of the season have been the 
successful Annual Meetings of the Royal Agricultural Societies of 
Kingland, Scotland, and Ireland, at which cattle have once more 
been allowed a place, the restrictions on the home trade imposed 
against the spread of the cattle plague having been at length wholly 
removed. The attempt of the Government to pass a Bill for the 
establishment of separate Water-side Markets for Foreign Cattle, 
which should diminish the risk of a re-introduction of the plague, 
was defeated by the jealousy of any restriction upon the trade in 
food entertained by a resolute minority of the House of Commons. 
Whether their refusal of this kind of protection of the home interests 
may not, by permitting the re-introduction of foreign diseases, 
diminish the supply of animal food, and so increase the cost of 
it at least as much as the opponents of the measure feared, remains 
to be seen, While we write, cargoes of foreign sheep are arriving 
suffermg from the small-pox ; and we hear of rinderpest within easy 
reach of us upon the continent. Let us hope that the new Par- 
liament will reconsider the decision of the last, and that every care 
may be taken so to regulate the importation of live-stock to our 
shores, that the risk of introducing the deadly plagues of the last 
few years may be reduced to a minimum. 
2. ARCHAXOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. 
THE proposal to publish a translation of Dr. Haekel’s great work, 
made at the Annual Meeting of the Ray Society, was not favourably 
received, as many portions of it were considered likely to prove dis- 
* Bell and Daldy. 
