pected to be equal at least to 23 men; let the crew be Mr. Green and his assistant, and let the weight of twenty-three men, say 3400 lbs., be occupied by the lightest possible tubular boiler and highpressure steam-engine of 5-horse power, which, no doubt, would be got up with a 4-hours' load, at 2500lbs., leaving 1100 lbs. as the weight of the fliers for waftage. This might be expected to drive the balloons at from seven to eight miles per hour, which would be quite sufficient as a first experiment.

As men have the choice of time, in a great degree, those winds that are tolerably favourable to any intended voyage, can often be selected; different current in the air can also be occasionally met with, so that balloons offer more advantages from the wind, than inconvenience from its occasionally being too strongly against their line of sailing.

I have been applied to by an ingenious foreign mechanic, now in Rome, who affirms, that by a particular apparatus of his own, he has guided small balloons with considerable velocity; that he is in possession of an engine four-times more energetic, weight for weight, than the lightest of our steam-engines (the powers of which I gave him, as stated in this letter), and that he wishes much to exhibit the proof of what he says, in London, should he meet with any persons who would pay the expenses of his journey; previous to which, he offers to satisfy any of the British residents in Rome that he can perform what he asserts. Should a good subscription-purse be obtained for general ballooning purposes, it may be just and desirable to give this humble workman an opportunity of substantiating his claims, by thus previously exhibiting his machine to the celebratep artists, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Macdonald, or other well-known British residents u Rome. For my own part, I shall be ready to become a subscriber to any rational plan for trying experiments upon balloons on truly scientific principles, and free from any jobbing or exhibition-making speculations.

Let the friends of aerial navigation be called together by advertisement in your pages, at the instigation of a few names favourable to the project; let a placesay the Adelaide Gallery, if the proprietors permit it and some convenient day in next month, be named;

Sir,-My thanks are due to Mr Lake, for the pains he has taken to correct an error into which it appears I had fallen, in an article published in your 637th Number, on the practicability of guiding and directing air-balloons. I know it is usual occasionally when a palpable blunder appears, to take shelter behind the printer's devil, by representing it as a typographical error; however, on the present occasion, I have no desire to interpose this shield, but will readily admit that it might possibly have been so stated in the manuscript, although with Mr. Lake, I cannot "imagine how I could make so great a mistake in so simple a calculation." A mistake it certainly is ; and as Mr. Lake, I dare say, will readily allow me the credit of the blunder, I am willing to repay his courtesy by conceding to him the honour of having corrected it. Mr. Lake thinks it seems that the strength of a hundred eagles or so, would be as nothing if applied to overcome the great resistance opposed to the progress of a balloon against the wind, but thinks that great power might be gained from an air-pump. Well, if Mr. Lake likes the air-pump better, I have no objection. But afterwards, seeming to forget himself, he breaks out into the grandiloquent style and says, we see the eagle possessed of power, not merely sufficient to raise its ponderous body from the earth, but also giving it a velocity outstripping the wings of the wind." Therefore, says Mr. Lake, eagles would be of no use whatever.

Farther on he says, “the effect (that is of the aforesaid air-pump) would be so certain, and the means of applying it so simple and easy, as to leave comparison with any method already known out of the question." Those who understand the subject, will not be disposed to entertain any doubts as to the effect, I believe, looking at the means proposed; but "the effect" would be of a very dif

their numbers, but with the effect of puzzling the matter more than if the details sought had been still left to the vagne conjecture of individuals.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, however, of whose importance he seems to be pretty well aware, Mr. M'Culloch, the well-known lecturer on Political Economy, and author of the "Dictionary of Commerce," and several other works of the same complexion, has thought the present a fit and proper time for putting forth a new "Statistical Survey of the British Empire." "'* It must be acknowledged that a standard work on the condition of the United Kingdom has been for a long time one of the most crying of our literary desiderata,-but we are by no means so well satisfied that the method adopted by Mr. M'Culloch is the proper one for filling up the vacuum so completely as it ought to be. After remarking in his preface, that the work of Chamberlayne, published in the reign of George the Second, was the last of the kind of any authority, he goes on to observe, that "during the long interval between Sir William Petty and Dr. Beeke, statistical science could scarcely be said to exist," but that, much infor mation having been given in the Censuses of 1821 and 1832, and in the recent Reports of Parliamentary Committees and Crown Commissioners, "the time seemed to be at length arrived when it might be attempted to compile a work that should give a pretty fair representation of the present condition of the United Kingdom." Here we join issue. The grand work that is to take its place as the standard Picture of Great Britain will derive a good deal of assistance, of course, from the (too) large accumulation of raw material contained in the Parliamentary Reports, but its foundation must be laid on the basis of ORIGINAL RESEARCH, and not a stone used in the superstructure from the mass so temptingly at hand, until its trustworthiness has been tested by actual experiIn other words, the authors of such a work must see with their own eyes, and make use of the population and other returns only so far as they tally with

ment,

*A Statistical Account of the British Empire, exhibiting its Extent, Physical Capacities, Popu lation, Industry, and Civil and Religious Institutions. By J. R. M'Culloch, Esq. Assisted by numerous Contributors. In 2 vols. London, 1837. C. Knight and Co. 8vo., pp. 642-700.

the results of actual observation. Mr. McCulloch, it will be seen, does not think this troublesome process necessary. His work is entirely and altogether a compilation-a book made up of scraps from other books, without the writer's troubling himself to walk half-a-dozen steps from his library to ascertain from a peep at the out-of-doors-world whether any feature of the picture he was drawing of it was like or no in short, a book where every thing is taken upon trust, and no addition made to the general stock of information. It is not a work so got up that will definitively fill up the "aching void" which is generally admitted to exist.

The plan followed is nearly the same as that of Peuchet, in his "6" Statistique Elementaire de la France," relieved a little of its excessive dryness,—for, strange to say, on dry subjects our usually lively neighbours approach to the proverbial aridity of "a lime-burner's basket." Our author says on this head,—

"We have not been satisfied, for example, in giving an account of any branch of industry, with stating the value of its products, the number and wages of the people engaged in it, and so forth; but have, in addition, given some notices of its history, and of the more prominent circumstances that have accelerated or retarded its progress. This seemed to be necessary to impart interest to the work, to make it useful, and to give it a chance for getting into circulation.”

A rather strange confession to be made by a statistician,—a dealer in nothing but mere figures, amounting, as it does, to an admission that his own peculiar department is without either interest or utility, and (which is most to the point, and doubtless true enough,) without saleability. Most readers will be perfectly ready to concur in the whole of this candid estimate of the value of bare "statistical science," per se.

The work opens with a general view of the "Extent, Physical Circumstances, and Civil Divisions of the British Empire;" the first chapter, subdivided into various sections, being devoted to England and Wales. This geographical portion is well executed, and appears to be a sort of abridgment of that part of the "Library of Useful Knowledge devoted to "Physical Geography "—a subject on which many numbers of that series have recently appeared. Nor is

this the only part of the work in something like the same predicament: no small quantity of the remainder of its contents having appeared at one time or other in some of the multifarious periodicals issued by the Society, espe cially in the Penny Cyclopædia. Of course this matter is dovetailed in here by the Society's consent, as we are informed in the preface, that, although edited solely by Mr. M'Culloch, it is published with the sanction, and, we believe (for the point is left in a rather obscure state), at the expense of the ex-Chancellor's

literary club." For the general part of this introductory chapter we are indebted to the editor himself-the sections which follow, on the Geology, Climate, Botany, and Zoology of England and Wales, are respectively contributed by Mr. R. Bakewell, Dr. Copland, Sir William Jackson Hooker, and Mr. Swainson: each of these is good of its kind, but being the production of hands working independently of each other, they do not perhaps combine so well as might be wished to form a harmonious whole: they have too much the air of separate essays, rather than parts of the same work; though this is by no means offensively apparent. The "Statistical Sketches of the English Counties," which succeed to the general view, are too short to allow of any thing more than a very meagre outline of the capacities and characteristics of each; and even this, so far as it is founded on statistical authorities, is too often of a misleading nature. Thus, under the head Herts, after a tolerable, but too short topographical sketch, we are informed that the largest town in the county is Hemel Hempstead, which is represented as far exceeding even the county-town in population. This is one of the many instances of error produced by the population returns. The town in question is, in fact, a small and unimportant one, far exceeded in every respect not only by Hertford, but by St. Alban's, which is not noticed at all in this "Statistical Survey," and many others; it happens, however, to have a very large extent of rural district parochially attached to it, and, the census returns being made from the parishes, the numbers of the country population (exceeding by three or four times that of the town proper) go to swell up Hemel Hempstead to the dimensions of a "town

of the first importance;" while St. Alban's, being split into several parishes, with no rural district at all, is left out altogether. There are numberless such instances as this, some of which are indeed. noticed by Mr. M'Culloch himself; and such being the case with the simple enumeration of the people, what reliance can be placed on these same returns when they relate to matters so much more recondite, as their ages, occupations, &c. We hap. pen to know that a certain parish in the suburbs of London, which is entirely covered by houses, flourishes in the re turns as finding agricultural employment for 47 families, while its next neighbour country wards, which is of infinitely greater extent, is built on only in a small proportion, and contains a number of farins, besides numbers without number" of market gardens, nurseries, pleasuregrounds, &c &c., is made to support only 19 families of the same description! In fact, without some means of correction by local knowledge, the population returns are merely "blind leaders of the blind;"-those who make use of their guidance had need to keep their own eyes wide open into the bargain.

To "England and Wales" succeed similar notices of "Scotland" and "Ireland." Part II. is devoted to a summary of the various population returns, chiefly in the " dry bones" form of figures alone; and Part III., which is the most copious of all, relates to that widelyramifying subject, the "Industry" of the British empire, commencing with Agriculture, from which we pass on, through Mines, Minerals, and Fisheries, to the almost inexhaustible subject of "Manufactures," on which Mr. M'Culloch is much more elaborate than on any of the preceding divisions. After a general sketch of the "Circumstances favourable to Manufactures" in this country, he proceeds, in the style indicated by the short extract we have quoted from the Preface, to devote a section each to the Woollen, Cotton, Linen, and Silk Manųfactures, one to Hardware, Watches, Jewellery, &c., another to Manufactures in Leather, one to Earthenware and Glass, and one to Paper; the whole winding up with a section on that gigantic subject of Breweries and Distilleries, and a second on Miscellaneous Productions, Hats, Soap, Sugar, &c. Each of these articles contains a good deal of in

"The manufacture of earthenware, or, as it is frequently called, stoneware, is of very considerable importance. It is carried on in several parts of the country; but its principal seat is in the district called, by way of distinction, the Potteries,' in the northwest part of Staffordshire. It is doubtful when the manufacture was originally established here; but it has certainly been prosecuted at Burslem for the last two centuries. Dr. Plot, whose Natural History of Staf fordshire' was published in 1686, gives what is believed to have been a very accurate ac count of the manufacture at that time. The wares were then of the coarsest and commonest sort, and consisted principally of pots for the preservation of butter, whence Burslem is, in several old maps, marked with the appellation of Butter Pottery!' Plot says that the wares were chiefly sold to the poor crate-men, who carried them at their backs all over the country!' About the year 1690, some improvements were introduced into the manufacture by two foreigners of the name of Ellers. Superior clays were also brought from Dorset and Devonshire; and the fabric of the ware was improved by the addition of pounded flints, &c. Still, however, British earthenware was very inferior in beauty to that of France, which was, consequently, imported in considerable quantities, and was almost the only thing made use of by the more opulent class of customers.

"It was not till about the year 1760, or 1762, that the grand era of improvement commenced in the potteries. We are indebted for it to the exertions and example of Mr. Josiah Wedgwood, who did for the manufacture of earthenware what Arkwright did for that of cotton. This eminent individual was the youngest son of a potter, was very indifferently educated, and received but little property from his father. But these untoward circumstances, far from repressing, served rather to stimulate the native vigour of his mind. His original and inventive genius enabled him to make many important discoveries; while his practical acquaintance

with the business gave him the means of successfully introducing them into practice. Besides improving the composition, the glaze, and the colours of the old wares, he invented several that were altogether new; and (which was least to be expected from a person in his situation) he made vast im. provements upon the figure of the articles manufactured, displaying in their formation a degree of classical elegance, and purity of design, which materially improved the national taste, and has never been surpassed. In addition to this, Mr. Wedgwood successfully exerted himself to improve the communications with the potteries; and was mainly instrumental in carrying the Act for the Trent and Mersey Canal through Parlia ment, and in accomplishing that grand undertaking. The village of Etruria, where his works were situated, was built by him. Since his death, which took place in 1795, they have been carried on by his descendants.

"The inventions and discoveries of Mr. Wedgwood were soon universally introduced, and the manufacture has since continued gradually to extend and to improve. Its progress, we are assured, has been such, that a workman of the present day can, in a given time, produce about four times the quantity of manufactured articles he could have done in 1790!

"Exclusive of earthenware, china-ware is also extensively manufactured in the pottery district. It is estimated that the value of the various sorts of earthenware produced at the potteries may amount to about 1,500,000l. or 1,600,000l. a year, and that the earthenware produced at Worcester, Derby, and other parts of the country, may amount to about 750,0001. more; making the whole value of the manufacture 2,250,000l. or 2,350,000l. a year. The consumption of gold for gilding, &c. at the potteries, is about 6501. a week, and of coal about 8000 tons a week.

"The finer sorts of clay used in the potteries are principally brought from the Isle of Purbeck, in Dorsetshire, and from Devonshire; stealites, or soap-stone, is brought from Cornwall, large quantities of flints from Kent, and some from Wales, Ireland, &c. The canals by which Staffordshire is intersected, and which unite the potteries with all the principal ports of the kingdom, afford the greatest facilities for the conveyance of the raw materials used in the manufacture, and for the easy distribution of the wares to the great markets at home and abroad.

"The population of the pottery district, which is naturally poor and barren, is exceedingly dense. It comprises from 60,000 to 70,000 inhabitants. The principal places are Burslem, Shelton, Longton, Stoke-uponTrent, Henley, Lunstell, Lane-End, Etruria,