Excise.—­It is but rarely the Inland Revenue authorities give the public any information showing the amount of taxes gathered in by the officials, and the return, therefore, for the year ending March 31, 1879, laid before the House of Commons, is worth preserving, so far as the Birmingham collection goes.  The total sum which passed through the local office amounted to L89,321, the various headings under which the payments were entered, being:—­Beer dealers, L2,245; beer retailers, L7,161; spirit dealers, L1,617; spirit retailers, L8,901; wine dealers, L874; wine retailers, L2,392; brewers, L9,518; maltsters, L408; dealers in roasted malt, L17; manufacturers of tobacco, L147; dealers in tobacco, L1,462; rectifiers of spirits, L11; makers of methylated spirits, L10; retailers of methylated spirits, L33; vinegar makers, L26; chemists and others using stills, L4; male servants, L1,094; dogs, L1,786; carriages, L4,613; armorial bearings, L374; guns, L116; to kill game, L1,523; to deal in game, L136; refreshment houses, L366; makers and dealers in sweets, L18; retailers of sweets, L42; hawkers and pedlars, L68; appraisers and house agents, L132; auctioneers, L1,210; pawnbrokers, L1,958; dealers in plate, L1,749; gold and silver plate duty, L17,691; medicine vendors, L66; inhabited house duty, L21,533.

The Excise (or Inland Revenue) Offices are in Waterloo Street, and are open daily from 10 to 4.

Excursions.—­The annual trip to the seaside, or the continent, or some other attractive spot, which has come to be considered almost an essential necessary for the due preservation of health and the sweetening of temper, was a thing altogether unknown to the old folks of our town, who, if by chance they could get as far as Lichfield, Worcester, or Coventry once in their lives, never ceased to talk about it as something wonderful.  The “outing” of a lot of factory hands was an event to be chronicled in Aris’s Gazette, whose scribes duly noted the horses and vehicles (not forgetting the master of the band, without whom the “gipsy party” could not be complete), and the destination was seldom indeed further than the Lickey, or Marston Green, or at rarer intervals, Sutton Coldfield or Hagley.  Well-to-do tradesmen and employers of labour were satisfied with a few hours spent at some of the old-style Tea Gardens, or the Crown and Cushion, at Perry Barr, Aston Cross or Tavern, Kirby’s, or the New Inn, at Handsworth, &c.  The Saturday half-holiday movement, which came soon after the introduction of the railways, may be reckoned as starting the excursion era proper, and the first Saturday afternoon trip (in 1854) to the Earl of Bradford’s, at Castle Bromwich, was an eventful episode even in the life of George Dawson, who accompanied the trippites.  The railway trips of the late past and present seasons are beyond enumeration, and it needs not to be said that anyone with a little spare cash can now be whisked where’er he wills, from John-o’-Groats