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expenditure incurred in the rigging out of a brace of pauper lads with apparel made of eight yards of Kidderminster stuff, at 14d. Subsequently a frize cloth was manufactured. Early in the eighteenth century, worsted stuffs and stuffs of silk and worsted, as also carpets, striped "tameys and prunella," and figured and flowered silks, were produced. The carpet trade became gradually extended in the middle of that century, and the article soon gained a name for brilliance and durability of colourn - the result, as was generally supposed, of a peculiarity in the Stour water. In 1772 there were eleven master carpet weavers and 29 silk and worsted manufacturers, with 250 carpet looms and 1,700 silk and worsted looms, at work. Bombazine weaving was also carried on during the early part of the present century. It is somewhat singular that the Kidderminster carpet proper is no longer made here, but has been transferred to Yorkshire and other places ; while the Brussels carpet is now the staple here, and printed tapestry carpets were introduced some twenty years ago. Since that time a great revolution has taken place in the trade by the adoption of steam-power looms, in lieu of the old hand-looms, which had permitted of the trade being a domestic one, carried on in many cases at the workpeople's houses. The application of steam brought with it the erection of large sheds and warehouses, and a great outlay of capital. Where this was not forthcoming, much of the old property became almost worthless, and numbers of workpeople left the town, so that the population in 1861 was some 3,000 less than at the previous census. Nevertheless, it is believed by competent authorities that there has been a bright side to the picture, and that the condition of the weavers has been raised and improved, their habits rendered more regular, their places of work more comfortable than the old hand-loom shops and private garrets, and the morals of both classes amended now that women are no longer employed to draw for the men. Under the old system nothing was more common than for married men to have single females working at the same loom with them, and as