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of the name and title of the Lyttelton family coming to an end for want of male issue. The present Lord is the worthy sire of a numerous family, and his eldest son, the Hon. Charles George Lyttelton, heir presumptive to the barony of Frankley in the peerage of England, to the barony of Westcote in the peerage of Ireland, and to an English baronetcy some two and a half centuries old, celebrated his majority on the 29th October, 1863, when his ancestral halls resounded with festivity, and all who knew him unfeignedly wished him long life and prosperity, if not so numerous a progeny as his noble father.

Hales Owen.

AN ancient border town, whose fate it has been to be bandied about by the two counties to which it has alternately belonged. Before the Conquest it was a part of the county of Worcester; afterwards it was attached to Salop; and in October, 1844, the whole parish was re-annexed to Worcestershire under the provisions of a general Act of Parliament relating to isolated parts of counties. Worcestershire would most willingly have made a present of the place to her neighbour, Shropshire, as she had already offered Dudley to Staffordshire with the hope of easing her own assize and sessions calendars, but the ruling powers of that day ordered it otherwise. Hales Owen, although a manufacturing place, has many attractions for the visitor. It is situate in a pleasing valley, possessing a rich clay soil, fertile in grain and pasturage, watered by the Stour, which rises in the adjoining parish of Frankley. The Clent hills and the woods of the neighbourhood add greatly to the beauty of the scenery. The town is made picturesque by half-timbered houses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and has an interesting old church, with portions of Norman