off.—Last week Thomas Piercy, a blacksmith of Deptford, in Kent, about 25 years of age, was married to Mrs. Brookes, a gentlewoman of a considerable fortune in the same town, aged about 70. This gentlewoman has had four husbands before.—Prices of corn at Manchester: White wheat, per load, from 18s. to 20s.; red wheat, from 15s. to 17s.; barley, from 8s. to 11s.; beans, from 11s. to 12s.; meal, from 13s. to 14s.” There is plenty of talk about the convention with Spain, which need not be repeated. These citations may suffice. They are fair samples of what may be found in the local newspapers of the first half of the eighteenth century. The early Lancashire journalist was a man of many parts. Thus the _Lancashire Journal_, in December, 1740, is said to be “printed by John Berry, Watchmaker and Printer, at the Dial near the Cross, who makes and Mends all sorts of Pocket Watches, also makes and mends all sorts of Weather Glasses, makes all sorts of Wedding, Mourning, and other Gold Rings, and Earrings, etc., and sell all Sorts of New Fation’d Mettal, Buttons for Coats and Wastcoats, and hath Great Choice of New Fation’d Mettal, Buckles, for Men, Women, and Children, all sorts of Knives, fine Scissors, Razors, Lancits, Variety of Japan’d Snuff Boxes, Violins, Fluts, Flagelets and Musick Books, Box, Ivory, and Horn, Combs, Silk, Purses, Spectacles, Coffee and Chocolate Mills, Wash Balls, Sealing Wax, and Wax Balls for Pips, Correls, Tea Spoons, Fiddle Strings, Spinnet Wire, Naked and Drest Babys,[5] Cards, Cain for Hooping, Bird Cages, etc., with several other sorts of London, Birmingham, and Sheffield, Cutler’s Wares, and variety of Dutch and English Toys. He also sells (notwithstanding what is, has, or may be advertised to the Contrary), the True Daffy’s Elixir, Doctor Anderson Sick Pills, Chymical Drops, being a speedy cure for coughs, colds, and Asthma’s, Doctor Godfreys Cordial for Children, Doctor Bateman’s Drops, Stoughtons Elixir, Hungry Water, Spirits of Scurvy Grass, Flower of Mustard in 3d. Bottles, Oyl of Mustard, and all sorts of Snuffs, at the Lowest Rates.” The variety of his wares has affected both his spelling and his punctuation. We cannot estimate the feelings of our great-grandfathers as they turned over the leaves of their small paper; but the antiquary of the present day would gladly dispense with a good deal about bashaws and conventions for a little more about those who lived and moved and had their being in this county. Footnote 5: This is not a slave trading announcement as the unwary might suppose. “Baby” is an old word for a doll. It has survived in the Lancashire dialect in its more extended meaning of a small image or representation. “Aw’ve a book full of babs” is a phrase in Edwin Waugh’s most famous poem. A Lancashire Naturalist: Thomas Garnett.