150 absence of any external feature which can interest the passer-by, there is not much to be said of any of our other towns on the score of pecu¬ liarity. We may perhaps except Birkenhead, which has sprung up with American rapidity and English solidity, and which, to all appear¬ ances, before the century has passed, will become our most populous as it is our last born town. The only wonder is, that the natural advan¬ tages of Birkenhead were not earlier appreciated ; as some engineer observed on seeing the two towns, " that Liverpool had been built on the wrong side of the river." Before the adaptation of steam to land and water transit, this river must, however, have formed an insuperable bar to Birkenhead becoming what it now is—a suburb of Liverpool. As a proof of this, in a late number of the Chester Courant I saw an anecdote told by Mr. Hodgson at a dinner at Liverpool, to the effect that there was a letter still preserved in his family, written by his grandfather, and dated from Chester, whither he had gone to be married. The object of the letter was to request his friends in Liverpool to send a pilot across the river on his wedding day to convey him safely over the Mersey. Birkenhead Park is a proof of the victory of taste and money over every possible disadvantage of soil and situation. Paxton found there a brick-field, and left a paradise. There are interesting remnants of former days at Sandbach, Nant- wich, and Macclesfield Kuutsford considers that'it traces its origin to the time of Canute. In a very old map of Cheshire in the Chetham Library, at Manchester, dated 1577, the name of the town is written Knottesforth. Instead of being the ford of Canute, or Canutesford, I should give it the same prosaic origin as Oxford. Nowt is an old word for cattle. In Domesday Book the name of the town is Cunetesford. This is still more favourable to my version, as there is an old word Cun, for cattle, from which kine is obviously derived. There is a bird of the Tringa (or plover) species found in Lincolnshire, called the Knot. Camden says it derives its name from King Canute (or, as he was commonly called, Knute or Knout,) and that the bird was called after the king, being a favourite dish of that monarch. I allude to this to shew what authority there may be for the royal derivation of Knutsford ; and, I should add, that a talented local antiquary (the Rev. H. Green) rejects every origin for the town's name but a royal one. There is one custom of the town which I believe is quite peculiar to it. We hear amongst the Romans a fortunate or happy day is called " cretti notanda dies"—a day to be marked with chalk, in contra-distinction to one marked M carbone" or with charcoal,—the sign of ill-luck and misfortune. But in Knutsford, on the marriage of any of the inhabitants, or of any one of note in the immediate neighbourhood, they sprinkle the fronts of their houses and the streets with white sand or " greet," as it is there called, with winch