This steer was bred by Mr. Christopher Clark, of Hunmanby, Yorkshire, and calved on December 24th, 1858. He was got by Young Emperor out of Mayflower, by Richmond, her dam Cherry Blossom, by Richmond.

The steer was purchased when very young by Mr. George Taylor, of Sewerby Cottage, Bridlington Quay, who took the first prize of his class at Bridlington with him in 1860, and another first prize again at Bridlington, with a similar one at Driffield, in the summer of 1861. The beast was then in careful preparation for the Great Christmas Shows, and was brought on to Birmingham in December. He won here the first prize of £10 as the best Shorthorn steer, the extra prize of £20 as the best Shorthorn in the Show, and the GOLD MEDAL as the best Ox or Steer in the yard, Mr. McCombie's polled heifer alone beating him for the cup as the best animal in Bingley Hall. In his own proper class Mr. Samuel Wiley's steer was second, while those exhibited by the Duke of Beaufort, Mr. Holland, M.P., Mr. Langston, M.P., and Mr. H. Sanders were commended.

In the week following, at the Smithfield Club Show Mr. Taylor's steer took the first prize of £25 as the best of the Shorthorn Steers, and the GOLD MEDAL as the best steer or ox in any of the classes, Mr. Clark duly receiving here and at Birmingham the silver medals as some slight tribute for having bred so good a beast. In Baker-street he beat Mr. Wortley's steer, the second prize, Mr. John Shaw's the third, with a steer of Mr. A. G. Chapman's highly commended, and the Duke of Beaufort's and Lord Radnor's commended. Mr. Taylor here sold his steer to Mr. Harris, of

Mr.

the New Cattle Market, and it was intended to have entered him for further honours at Poissy, but "the transfer" took place too late to allow of the animal's being sent across the channel, where his success would have been certain. We thus wrote of him when we first had the pleasure of meeting the gold medalist in Bingley Hall : "The Durhams opened so strongly, with such a steer as has been rarely seen of late years. George Taylor, of Sewerby, near Bridlington, is a new man in these parts, although a recognized good judge in his own district, where his ox has already been a winner. And the wonder if he had not been, for he is quite a picture to look upondeep and massive; a very model of level feeding and true symmetry; with a sweet head, a rare foreflank, a grand back, and other advantages that, with time,' would even still further develope. His colour, a very light roan, is rather against him; and his touch was not quite so firm as it should be; but the beast was evidently weary with travel, and he did not carry himself as well as he would had he been a little fresher. Still, he was a long way the best of his class."

It is only fair to say that this softness of touch has been otherwise accounted for. Fed, by the entry, "on Swede turnips, linseed cake, peameal, hay, and milk," the prize steer is said to have almost lived upon milk, from the time when Mr. Taylor bought him as a fat calf. Statists declare that it takes some four hundred pounds to bring a colt to the post for the Derby, and it might be not altogether an unprofitable study to see how much it costs to get a prize steer "placed" for the judges,

We have here a scene in the desert, where an Arabian stallion is led out by his groom for the inspection of the cool, scrutinizing gentleman quietly smoking his hookah under the sacred shade of the neighbouring pyramids. Mr. Cooper might have introduced an English dealer on a summer tour, in these times of Overland Routes, with an eye may-be to an Arabian for improving the breed of our weight-carrying cobs. "There is not an Arabian, however poor," says Buffon, "who has not his horse," and they are as fond of them as the Irish are of their pigs-the same tent serving for mare and foal, husband, wife, and children. They pig altogether-the infants often lying on the body, or on the neck of the mare and foal, without receiving any injury, The Arabs are great in pedigree, like ourselves, often knowing more about the race of their horses than they do of their neighbours. When a family have no noble stallions, they borrow one of a friend to serve their mares, a ceremony which is performed in the presence of witnesses, who give an attestation of it, signed and sealed, before the Secretary of the

Emir, or some other public personage. This attestation contains the names of the horse and mare, and a complete history of their pedigrees. When the mare has foaled, witnesses are again called, and another attestation is made, including a description of the foal and the day of its birth. The Arabs generally ride upon mares, having learned from experience that mares endure fatigue, hunger, and thirst better than horses, and we should say make better bed-fellows for their wives and children. The popular prestige amongst the English in favour of Arab blood and crosses is fast dying away. For speed they have no place by the side of our own thorough-bred horses; and even for endurance, the most authentic trials have all tended to show only how much we surpass the favourite child of the desert. Such breeders as have persevered here with them, have proved little more than a negative. The Arabian can now do little for the race-horse, although his handsome head and altogether showy appearance may tell in a park hack, a light charger, or a lady's 'prancing palfrey.

It is only when an irruption of the flood waters disturbs the peaceful order of things, that we think earnestly of our extensive lands whose level is below that of the tidal or other waters. At a period when the great value of these low-lying districts is now more and more engaging the cultivator's attention, it may be useful if we inquire a little into their history. It is more than probable that, so far from our agriculturists being arrested in their efforts to enlarge these fields by occasional heavy losses through defective sluices or breaches in dykes, still greater things will yet be accomplished in recovering from the waters partially-submerged lands. The embankment of the Lincolnshire Wash, now progressing-the proposed enclosure of more than 20,000 acres of salterns on the banks of the Swin, in Essex, all indicate the importance which the landowner attaches to diluvial soils. Such lands are commonly, in fact, composed of the very richest mixtures which dame Nature offers for our service. They are usually formed of the most finely-divided materials-earths and organic matters, deposited either by the tidal waters of the sea, or the fresh-water floods which pour down from more elevated adjacent lands.

When men first began to cultivate the earth, they soon found out the value of these naturally fertile soils-they very early began to protect them by

banks, and, in later times, to imitate these great works of nature.

The fertilizing effect of the mud deposited by the river waters was, indeed, one of the first practical remarks made by the cultivator of the soil. In choosing the most advantageous site for a farm, the lands lying near to the banks of rivers were those the first selected by mankind-the most readily seized upon for enclosure. These were not only already rich from the mechanically suspended matters deposited in them in bygone ages, but the fertile soils thus formed were annually replenished by the same kind of enriching substances left by subsidence from the flood waters. Such were, and are, the lands of Egypt-such the lands at the mouth of almost all the rivers of both the old world and the new. The alluvial soils of the valleys of the Thames, the Humber, the Nile, and the Ganges find a counterpart in the lands similarly placed, as in those of the Orinoco, the Ohio, and the Mississippi. It was only when all these naturally rich soils of the old world had been occupied, that men began to consider the cause of the riches of these lands; a fertility in the earliest ages attributed to the magic arts of some imaginary deity. Reason, however, at length taught them to seek a more practical explanation in the deposited mud, and then ceasing to be deceived by the wanderings of their imagination, they speedily

began to consider how these great efforts of nature might be profitably imitated. These led to the process of irrigating poor soils with river water surcharged with mud-a mode called "colmata" in Carniola, but "warping" in the north of England. The process adopted in Carniola is alluded to by Mr. Herepath (Jour. R.A.S., vol. ii., p. 94): In the Val di Chiana, he tells us, fields that are too low are raised and fertilized by the process called "colmata," which is done in the following manner: The field is surrounded by an embankment, to confine the waters. The dyke of the rivulet is broken down so as to admit the muddy waters of the high floods. The Chiana is too powerful a body of water for this purpose; it is only the streams that flow into the Chiana that are used. This water is allowed to deposit its mud upon the field. The water is then let off into the river at the lower end of the field by a discharging source called "scola," and in French "canal d'écoulement." The watercourse which conducts the water from a river, either to a field for irrigation or a mill, is called "gora." In this manner a field will be raised 5, and sometimes 7 feet, in ten years. If the dyke is broken down to the bottom, the field will be raised to the same height in seven years; but then in this case gravel is also carried in along with the mud. In a field of twentyfive acres, which had been six years under the process of "colmata," in which the dyke was broken down to within three feet of the bottom, the process was seen to be so far advanced, that only another year was requisite for its completion. The flood in this instance had been much charged with soil. The water which comes off cultivated land completes the process sooner than that which comes off hill and woodland. Almost all of the Val di Chiana has been raised by the process of "colmata."

Valuable, however, as are these low-lying districts, their cultivation is ever attended with certain considerable risks. It is only, in fact, when men begin to cultivate the rich sorts of lands below the level of the adjoining waters that their great risks of floods commence. It is then that dykes and other great works are necessary to keep out the waters. And not only do such embankments need great skill in their construction, but incessant watchfulness is also necessary to keep these in repair; a failure in this vigilance has too frequently led to disastrous results. We have all had our attention very recently directed to this fact in the case of the breach in a bank near Lynn. This is not the first instance where the tidal waters have made very extensive inroads in the banks which encircle our great Fen lands. Camden notices former great floods by inroads of the sea in Lincolnshire A.D. 245; and minor floods have since occurred down to June 1819. And these great overflowings of the tide were small, compared with those which have in bygone times devastated the dyke-encircled Hollanders. By one of these, on 17th April, 1446, the sea breaking in near Dort, the Zuyder Zee was formed, 72 villages were destroyed, and it was calculated that nearly 100,000 persons were drowned. We are told that for ages afterwards the tops of village towers and steeples were seen rising from the water of the Zuyder Zee. The land which has been, during these last few weeks, flooded in the marsh land district of Norfolk,

has been well described by Mr. J. A. Clarke, in his prize report on the Great Level of the Fens (Jour. Roy. Ag. Soc. vol. viii., p. 80). It is a portion only, however, of this district which has been recently so seriously injured, the entire level lying princi pally between Lynn and Wisbech, comprising seventeen parishes, and containing about 30,000 acres of

of fine land.

The soil of this valuable district is composed-to employ Mr. Clarke's own words of the subsidence of the muddy tidal water, which the agitation of the sea had removed from the adjoining estuary, or wash, which forms the great mouth of two very considerable rivers. It is a mixture of sea sand and mud, which is of so argillaceous a quality, probably owing to the stiff upland country through which the Ouse and the Nene flow, that the surface soil which covers the land is strong and tenacious enough to be regarded as clay. The whole country having been a present from the ocean, there still remains ranges of banks at a distance from each other, showing the progressive advances which industry has effected, ever eager to seize the spoils which so dreaded an enemy has relinquished. One of these banks is called, from its constructors, "The Roman;" its distance from the shore is not so great as it would have been, had the sea, in all ages, been as liberal as in this. The whole country was liable, upon a breach occurring in the outermost or Sea Dyke" bank, to be inundated; and history furnishes numerous instances of such disasters, the most terrible of these being that of 1613. On the 1st of November, "late in the night, the sea broke in, through the violence of a N.E. wind meeting with a spring-tide, and oveflowed all the marsh land, with the town of Wisbeach, both on the north and south sides, and almost the whole country round about," the loss of property amounting to £37,000. So wide was the devastation of the waves, that besides thousands of cattle and sheep, swept away by the rage of the sea, hundreds of houses were utterly destroyed, numbers of people being drowned in their beds. At Terrington, where the breach was made, the people fled for refuge to the church, to haystacks, and other erections; and had not the mayor and alderman of Lynn compassionately sent them beer and food by boat, many had perished. These boats, it seems, came the direct way over the submerged land from Lynn to Terring ton.

Mr. Rose has given the following as the series of the deposits of soil found in cutting the Eau brink drainage, near Lynn. ft. in.

1. Surface soil brown clay, with sand.. 4 0
2. Blue clay (having fresh water stalls) 3 0
3. Peat containing bones of ruminants
4. Blue clay like No. 2.......

5. Peat, with alder and hazel bushes;
the lower portion clay, containing
roots of marsh plants

6. Dark blue clay, not cut through a
marine silt..

2 24

8 0

3 0

20 2

But we need not go far from London, for an instance of the results of inattention to our marsh walls. In descending the Thames, we pass on our left hand the little village of Dagenham; and here,