7.—The actions arising out of the Middle Level inundations now took the form of an arbitration. The arbitrators were laymen, appointed by both parties, with a legal umpire, and their investigation of the merits of the case or cases commenced on this date, at the Incorporated Law Society’s house, Chancery Lane, London. The proceedings were protracted. In the first week of March several of the claimants, among them Mr. Mason, in whose name the first action was brought, accepted offers made by the Commissioners. The offers were in excess of the following items: (1) a year’s rent, tithes, taxes, and outgoings; (2) all expenses on the crops destroyed (tillage, seed sowing, &c.) up to the day of the inundation; (3) damage to fences, buildings, &c., and (4) the amount of a full year’s rent, tithes, and drainage taxes as profits to the tenants. In May the cases Coe _v._ Wise and Sharpe _v._ the Commissioners were argued in the Rolls Court, before Mr. Serjeant Hayes and Mr. Durrant and Mr. Bailey Denton, the arbitrators; and on June 22nd it was announced that Mr. Coe had been awarded £2,575, and Mr. Sharpe £405, the former getting £500 and the latter £100 more than the defendants offered. The defendants, therefore, were ordered to pay costs, and the litigation ended. 12.—Died at Bedford, Colonel Vincent Matthias, Madras Army, aged 73. Born at Norwich, he was of a family of fifteen, and nine of his brothers entered either the Navy or Army. He was appointed a cadet in 1810, and received his commission as ensign on August 24th, 1811, Colonel Mathias’ service extended over a period of more than thirty years. He was an ardent sportsman, and while in India made a valuable collection of natural history specimens, which he presented to the Norfolk and Norwich Museum. 15.—The proceedings of the Town Council relative to the Norwich sewerage scheme commenced this year with the payment to Mr. P. E. Hansell, solicitor, of £205, the amount of taxed costs allowed to the informants in obtaining the injunction restraining the Corporation from putting sewage into the river Wensum. On the 22nd the Council, after considerable debate, decided that the dry earth system advocated by Mr. Edward Boardman was not applicable to the district. The Court of Reference appointed by the House of Commons to try the merits of the Norwich Local Board of Health Bill with reference to its engineering details and the estimated cost of the proposed works, commenced its investigations on March 11th. The object of the Bill was “to provide for the better sewering of the city and the applying of the sewage to the irrigation of land.” The referees reported to the House on the 14th that the works and estimates were sufficient for the objects proposed. The Bill was before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on March 13th, and on March 26th it was, with certain amendments, reported to the House. (_See_ January 28th, 1868.)