History of the County Palatine and the Duchy of Lancaster.
By the late Edward Baines. Edited by James Croston, F.S.A. Vol III. (Heywood, Manchester.)—This important work, an enlarged and revised edition of what was before one of the best of the old county histories, is advancing towards completion. Such books do not bear anything like abridgment. Their strength is in detail. Mr. Croston has done well, therefore, in restoring to their place and completing the county pedigrees which formed a leading feature of the original work. The Hundred of Salford (in con- tinuation from the second volume) and the Hundred of Blackburn (to be concluded in the volume to follow), are the subjects here dealt with. Rochdale, Bury, and Bolton are the principal places
in the former (so far as it is here treated) ; in the latter, the great parish of Whalley, the ancient limits of which contained as much as four hundred square miles. Even now it includes more than one hundred and seventy, with a population of more than a quarter of a million, and a valuation of £983,204. (It is interesting to note that while the population has not quite doubled in thirty years, the valuation has very nearly trebled.) This volume, with its 426 large and closely printed pages, abounds with interesting details, historical, biographical, and antiquarian.
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