"In the town of Nottingham are two rock-hewn stairs. The most important is called the 'Long Stairs,' they begin, cut out of the perpendicular face of the rock, at its highest point, landing opposite the old mother church. The steps are now faced with harder material than the local sandstone. On the side there are houses, and indeed houses on the tops of houses, a tenant at a lower level, another at a higher, each obtaining entry from the stairs. The 'Short Stairs' are not wrought in the face of the cliff, and have houses on both sides. These are clearly in a prehistoric quarter of the town, where was once a hill-fort." (p. 159.) FORD CASTLES. The ancient ford at Retford, Notts, was more north than the present, and beside it is a red cliff largely cut into with joist-holes, &c., for floors and roofs, and give indications of former habitations. Radford, a name borrowed by the priory, _alias_ Worksop, is a hill of red sandstone that dominated the ford. On the hill is an entrenchment. (p. 160.) Mr. Stevenson remarks on the holes in the floor at Rochebrune; "This is what I should expect to find in a maltery, which must be of two floors, the lower one for steeping and sprouting the corn, and holding the fire-crates, the higher one for drying and storing the malt. The higher floors are now made of perforated tiles, the holes too small for the grains to pass through, but in old times I think the malt was dried in braziers something like large frying-pans. Drying rooms for wheat were attached to corn-mills to dry the corn before grinding. In some seasons corn is difficult to dry; perhaps in France they did not make malt, but they may have dried grapes." Malt was not made in Perigord, I believe; and the indications at Rochebrune are strongly those of defence against assailants. Grapes would hardly be dried in a cavern, but in the sun, and there is plenty of sun in the South of France. THE END