Funny Notions.—­The earliest existing statutes governing our Free Grammar of King Edward VI. bear the date of 1676.  One of these rules forbids the assistant masters to marry.—­In 1663 (temp.  Charles II.) Sir Robert Holte, of Aston, received a commission from Lord Northampton, “Master of His Majesty’s leash,” to take and seize greyhounds, and certain other dogs, for the use of His Majesty!—­The “Dancing Assembly,” which was to meet on the 30th January, 1783, loyally postponed their light fantastic toeing, “in consequence of that being the anniversary of the martyrdom of Charles I.”—­In 1829, when the Act was passed appointing Commissioners for Duddeston and Nechells, power was given for erecting gasworks, provided they did not extend over more than one acre, and that no gas was sent into the adjoining parish of Birmingham.—­A writer in Mechanics’ Magazine for 1829, who signed his name as “A.  Taydhill, Birmingham,” suggested that floor carpets should be utilized as maps where with to teach children geography.  The same individual proposed that the inhabitants of each street should join together to buy a long pole, or mast, with a rope and pulley, for use as a fireescape, and recommended them to convey their furniture in or out of the windows with it, as “good practice.”—­A patent was taken out by Eliezer Edwards, in 1853, for a bedstead fitted with a wheel and handle, that it might be used as a wheelbarrow.—­Sergeant Bates, of America, invaded Birmingham, Nov. 21, 1872, carrying the “stars and stripes,” as a test of our love for our Yankee cousins.

Funeral Reform.—­An association for doing away with the expensive customs so long connected with the burying of the dead, was organised in 1875, and slowly, but surely, are accomplishing the task then entered upon.  At present there are about 700 enrolled members, but very many more families now limit the trappings of woe to a more reasonable as well as economical exhibit of tailors’ and milliners’ black.

Furniture.—­Judging from some old records appertaining to the history of a very ancient family, who, until the town swallowed it up, farmed a considerable portion of the district known as the Lozells, or Lowcells, as it was once called, even our well-to-do neighbours would appear to have been rather short of what we think necessary household furniture.  As to chairs in bedrooms, there were often none; and if they had chimnies, only movable grates, formed of a few bars resting on “dogs.”  Window-curtains, drawers, carpets, and washing-stands, are not, according to our recollection, anywhere specified; and a warming-pan does not occur till 1604, and then was kept in the bed-room.  Tongs appear as annexations of grates, without poker or shovel; and the family plate-chest was part of bed-room furniture.  Stools were the substitutes for chairs in the principal sitting-room, in the proportion of even twenty of the former to two of the latter, which were evidently intended, par distinction, for the husband and wife.