a town of the county of Kent, in the hundred of that name and lathe of Aylesford, thirty-one miles from London. It stands on the river Medway, in a district of great fertility, but peculiarly eminent for the production of hops. The river is navigable for small craft to its junction with the sea at Sheerness. The town is well built, consisting of four principal streets meeting at the market-cross, and some others of less note. It is the county-town, where the assizes and sessions are held, as well as the county elections. The prison is a large and appropriate building. The parish church is a very handsome and extensive pile, and the county courts are conveniently arranged. By the corporation reform bill of 1835 the town was divided into three wards, and is governed by six aldermen and twelve councillors, with justices of the peace. It has returned two members to the House of Commons ever since the reign of Edward VI., and will continue to do so under the new law. The chief manufacture is paper, which is of the finest writing kind, and employs several mills turned by water, to the excellence of which, in some measure, the whiteness of the paper is to be ascribed. There is a weekly market held on Thursday, and a monthly one on the third Tuesday of each month, at which business to a vast amount is transacted, especially in hops. The inhabitants amounted in 1801 to 8027, in 1811 to 9443, in 1821 to 12,508, and in 1831 to 15,387.

MAIL INDUCTION, an ancient custom, in obedience to which the priest and people of country villages went in procession to some adjoining wood on a May-day morning, and then returned in a kind of triumph, with a May-pole, boughs, flowers, garlands, and other tokens of the spring. This May-game, or rejoicing at the coming of the spring, was for a long time observed, and still is so, in some parts of England; but there was thought to be so much heathen vanity in it, that it was condemned and prohibited within the diocese of Lincoln by the good old Bishop Grostete or Greathed.