appointment reached him, having obtained a commission in the Land Transport Corps, he declined the Adjutancy. It proved a wise resignation for him, as soon after, he was promoted in his own corps to the rank of Captain. Another sergeant—Henry Saville—from the artillery in the Crimea, was commissioned into the troop on the 22nd October, 1855, with the pay of 9_s._ 10_d._ a-day. To supply the general increase, several new recruiting stations were opened, and the militias were canvassed for candidates. The old stations sent in batches with their usual steadiness, scarcely accelerated by the popularity of the war; but the new ones, opening with a sort of burst, detailing the advantages of enlistment on gorgeous bills, offering high bounties, and lecturing the applicants with that hyperbolical eloquence which, though unfair, is tolerated as a necessary evil in military life, were very successful. Strong instalments of militia-men constantly arrived, but recruited as many of them were by line officers appointed to canvas particular districts, who knew nothing of the qualifications required of the candidates, not a few were useless for the general duties of the corps. But those were not times to stand opposed to the reception of men who, though they lacked the antecedents so uniformly exacted from recruits by officers of the royal engineers, might yet be made to perform serviceable duties in the trenches. In this way a vast number of militia-men—too many of them undersized, unseemly, and professionally incapable, of an entirely different stamp in character and impress to the genuine craftsman and sapper—fell into the ranks of the corps, who in less pressing times would have been regarded as not worth the trouble of a negotiation. In the course of nine months from the date of the increase no less than 500 militia-men and about 800 other recruits joined the royal sappers and miners.