Читать книгу: «Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853», страница 5
PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE
Precision in Photographic Processes.—I have for a long period observed, and been much annoyed at the circumstance, that many of your photographic correspondents are very remiss when they favour you with recipes for certain processes, in not stating the specific gravity of the articles used; also, in giving the quantities, in not stating if it is by weight or measure.
To illustrate my meaning more fully, I will refer to Vol. viii., p. 252., where a correspondent, in his albumen process, adds "chloride of barium, 7¼ dr." Now, as this article is prepared and sold both in crystals and in a liquid state, it would be desirable to know which of the two is meant before his disciples run the risk of spoiling their paper and losing their time.
How easy would it be to prefix the letter f where fluid oz., dr., or other quantity is meant.
Trusting that this hint may in future induce your correspondents to be as explicit as possible on all points, believe me to be an
Amateur Photographer.
Tent for Collodion.—As I have frequently benefited from the hints of your correspondents, I in my turn hasten to communicate a very simple plan I have contrived for a portable tent for the collodion process, in the hope it may be found to answer with others as well as it has done with me: it is as follows.
Round the legs of my camera stand (a tripod one) I have made a covering for two of the sides, of a double lining of glazed yellow calico, with a few loops at the foot to stake to the ground; the third side is made of thick dark cloth, much wider and larger than to cover the side, which is fastened at one leg of the stand to the calico. The other side is provided with loops to fasten to corresponding buttons on the other leg, and by bending on my knees I can easily pull the dark cloth over my head and back, fasten the loops to the buttons, and then I can perfectly perform any manipulation required, without the risk of any ray of white light entering; and certainly nothing can be more portable.
The simplicity of the thing makes any farther description of it unnecessary, to say nothing of your valuable space.
Jan.
Mr. Sisson's Developing Solution.—The Rev. Mr. Sisson, in a letter I received from him a few days ago, stated that he had been trying, at the recommendation of a gentleman who had written to him upon the subject, a stronger developing solution than that the formula for which he published some time back in your pages, and that it gave splendid positive pictures with very short exposure in the camera.
Since I received his letter I have been able to corroborate his testimony in favour of the stronger solution, and have much pleasure in sending you the formula for the benefit of your readers. It is this: 1½ drachms of protosulphate of iron in five ounces of water, 1 drachm of nitrate of lead, letting it settle for some hours; pour off the clear liquid, and then add to it 2 drachms of acetic acid.
J. Leachman.
20. Compton Terrace, Islington.
Mr. Stewart's Pantograph.—Will some of your photographic readers, who may know the proper size of Mr. Stewart's pantograph, give a detailed description of it? We should have focal length of lens, size of box, and the length of the sliding, parts of it. Cannot the lens be made fast in the middle of the box, provided the frames can be adjusted for different-sized pictures?
R. Elliott.
Replies to Minor Queries
George Browne of Shefford (Vol. viii., p. 243.).—I observe that in your interesting publication you have inserted the Query which I sent you long since. A somewhat similar Query of mine has already appeared, and been answered by your correspondents H. C. C. and T. Hughes; the latter stating that my particulars are not strictly correct, inasmuch as the individual styled by me as "Sir George Browne, Bart.," was in reality simple "George Browne, Esq." I admit this error; but if I was wrong, Mr. Hughes was so too, for George Browne's wife was Eleanor, and not Elizabeth, Blount, as appears by his affidavit in the State Paper Office, wherein he deposes that he "had by Ellinor, his late wife, deceased daughter of Sir Richard Blount, eight sons, namely, George, Richard, Anthony, John, William, Henry, Francis, and Robert, and seven daughters."
The sons are thus disposed of:
1. George, created K. B. at the coronation of Charles II.; married Elizabeth Englefield; had issue two daughters; died 1678.
2. Richard, a captain in the king's army, 1649, and was dead in 1650.
3. Anthony, who was "preferred to the trade of a Marchant," 1650.
4. John, a page to Prince Thomas, uncle to the Duke of Savoy; created Bart. 1665; married Mrs. Bradley; had issue.
5. William, had a "reversion of a copyhold in Shefford."
6. Henry, died unmarried, 1668; buried at Shefford.
7. Francis, nine years old in 1651; and
8. Robert, four years old in 1651.
In that year (1651) Henry, Francis, and Robert were living with their guardian, Mr. Libb, of Hardwick, Oxon; and soon afterwards we find them placed under the care of a clergyman at Appleshaw. But here we seem to lose sight of them altogether.
Mr. Hughes says that the only sons who married were George, the heir, and John, the younger brother; but we have no evidence of this; and as it is probable that some of the others, namely, Richard, Anthony, William, Francis, and Robert, married, I wish to procure proof either that they did or did not. If any of these married, I wish to know which of them, to whom, and when and where.
Perhaps some of your correspondents can tell me where Richard, Anthony, and William resided, and what became of Francis and Robert after they had left their tutor, the minister of Appleshaw.
Newburiensis.
Wheale (Vol. vi., p. 579.; Vol. vii., p. 96.).—Since this word is once more brought forward in "N. & Q." (Vol. viii., p. 208.), I will answer the Query respecting it. I was prepared to do so shortly after it first appeared, but I had reason to expect a reply from one more conversant with such archaisms. If the Querist, or either respondent, had examined the context, he could not have failed to discover a clue to the meaning, as the words "gall of dragons" instead of "wine," and "wheale" instead of "milk," are evidently translations of sound expressions in the preface of Pope Sixtus (or Xystus) V., to his edition of the Vulgate. The words there are "fel draconum pro vino, pro lacte sanies obtruderetur." Wheale more commonly signified, in later times, a pustule or boil; but it is from the Ang.-Sax. hwele, putrefaction. The bad taste of such language is too manifest to require farther comment.
If I were disposed to conclude with a Query, I might ask where Q. found that wheale ever meant whey?
W. S. W.
Middle Temple.
Sir Arthur Aston (Vol. viii., p. 126.).—He was appointed Governor of Reading, November 29, 1642; that his relative, Geo. Tattershall, Esq., was of Stapleford, Wilts, and only purchased the estate, West Court in Finchampstead, which went, on the marriage of his daughter, to the Hon. Chas. Howard, fourth son of the Earl of Arundel, and was sold by him.
A Reader.
"A Mockery," &c. (Vol. viii., p. 244).—Thomas Lord Denman is the author of the phrase in question. That noble lord, in giving his judgment in the case of O'Connell and others against the Queen, in the House of Lords, September 4, 1844, thus alluded to the judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench in Ireland, overruling the challenge by the traversers to the array, on account of the fraudulent omission of fifty-nine names from the list of jurors of the county of the city of Dublin:
"If it is possible that such a practice as that which has taken place in the present instance should be allowed to pass without a remedy (and no other remedy has been suggested), trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, will be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare."
See Clark and Finnelly's Reports of Cases in the House of Lords, vol. xi. p. 351.
C. H. Cooper.
Cambridge.
Norman of Winster (Vol. viii., p. 126).—I do not know if W. is aware that there was a family of Norman who was possessed of a share of the manor of Beeley, in the parish of Ashford, Derbyshire, which came from the Savilles, the said manor having been purchased by Wm. Saville, Esq., 1687.
A Reader.
Arms of the See of York (Vol. viii., pp. 34. 111. 233.).—Thoroton has a curious note on this subject in his History of Nottinghamshire (South Muskham, in the east window of the chancel), from which it would appear that neither Thoroton himself, nor his after-editor Thoresby, could be aware of the change that had taken place. The note, however, may help to complete the catena of those incumbents of the see of York who (prior to Cardinal Wolsey) bore the same arms as the see of Canterbury:
"There are the arms of the see of Canterbury, impaling Arg. three boars' heads erased and erected sable, Booth, I doubt mistaken for the arms of York, as they are with Archbishop Lee's again in the same window; and in the hall window at Newstede the see of Canterbury impales Savage, who was Archbishop of York also, but not of Canterbury that I know of."—Vol. iii. p. 152., ed. Notts, 1796.
Can any of your antiquarian contributors say why the sees of Canterbury and York bore originally the same arms? Had it any relation to the struggle for precedence carried on for so many years between the two sees?
J. Sansom.
Mr. Waller, in his volume on Monumental Brasses, in describing that of William de Grenfeld, Archbishop of York, says:
"The arms of the two archiepiscopal sees were formerly the same, and continued to be so till the Reformation, when the pall surmounting a crozier was retained by Canterbury, and the cross keys and tiara (emblematic of St. Peter, to whom the minster is dedicated), which until then had been used only for the church of York, were adopted as the armorial bearings of the see."
To the word "tiara" he appends a note:
"Or rather at this period a regal crown, the tiara having been superseded in the reign of Henry VIII."
He gives no authority for the statement, but the note appears contradictory, and implies two changes in the first to the cross-keys and tiara, which may corroborate the notion of its having been adopted by Cardinal Wolsey; secondly, the substitution of the crown for the tiara. Can this be proved?
F. H.
Roger Wilbraham, Esq.'s, Cheshire Collection (Vol. viii., p. 270.).—It is probable these MSS. are still at the family seat of the Wilbrahams, Delamere Lodge, Northwitch. When Ormerod published his History of Cheshire, in 1819, they were in the custody of the family. He says (vol. iii. p. 232.):
"In the possession of the family is a curious series of journals commenced by Richard Wilbraham of Nantwich, who died in 1612, and continued regularly to the time of his great-great-grandson, who died in 1732. As a genealogical document, such a memorial is invaluable; and it contains many curious incidental notices of passing events, and of minute particulars relating to the town of Nantwich, of whose rights the Wilbrahams of Townsend were the never-failing and active guardians."
J. Yeowell.
Pierrepont (Vol. vii., p. 606.).—A descendant thanks C. J. The information wanted is parentage and descent of John Pierrepont of Wadworth, who in a family mem. by his great-great-granddaughter is called "Uncle to Evelyn, Earl of P." Any information respecting John Pierrepont or his descendants through Margaret Stevens will much oblige.
A. F. B.
Diss.
Passage in Bacon (Vol. viii., p. 141.).—In the Notes on Bacon's Essay II. "On Death," there appears the following:
"In the passage of Juvenal, the words are 'Qui spatium vitæ,' and not 'Qui finem vitæ,' as quoted by Lord Bacon. Length of days is meant."
His lordship's memory and ear too certainly misled him with respect to the wording, but he has correctly given us the sense. Juvenal has been arguing (l. iv. Sat. x.) on the vanity of earthly blessings, so called, in quite a philosophic way; it is hardly possible to suppose him closing his sermon with—
"Fortem posce animum, mortis terrore carentem,
Qui spatium vitæ extremum inter munera ponat
Naturæ, qui ferre queat quoscumque labores,
Nesciat irasci, cupiat nihil, et potiores
Herculis ærumnas credat, sævosque labores,
Et Venere, et cœnis, et plume Sardanapali."
if by spatium he meant "length;" but how apt and beautiful in Lord Bacon's sense! A note on the passage in the Var. Ed. of 1684 has "Qui sciat mortem munus aliquod naturæ esse."
Emmanuel Cantab.
Monumental Inscription in Peterborough Cathedral (Vol. viii., p. 215.).—In consequence of the very curious Notes communicated by H. Thos. Wake, I would beg to draw that gentleman's attention to the very important MS. collections of Bp. White Kennet on the subject of this cathedral in the Lansd. MSS., British Museum, to which I shall be happy to give him the references in a private letter, if he will favour me with his address.
E. G. Ballard.
Lord North (Vol. vii., p. 207).—I feel much obliged to your correspondent C. for his courtesy in replying to my inquiry concerning this nobleman. His remembrance of the personal appearance of George III., and his remarks on the subject, are in my opinion conclusive; but the appearance of the statement in the Life of Goldsmith was such as to provoke inquiry. May I ask our correspondent C. (who appears to be acquainted with the North genealogy) whether a sister of the premier North, by the some mother, was not alive some years after the year 1734? Collins records the birth of an infant daughter, but the fact is overlooked in modern peerages.
Observer.
Land of Green Ginger (Vol. viii., pp. 34. 160. 227.).—Mr. Frost, in his History, p. 71., &c., has shown many instances of alteration in the names of streets in Hull from the names of persons, as from Aldegate to Scale Lane, from Schayl, a Dutchman; and Mr. Richardson has made it most probable that the designation "Land of Green Ginger" took place betwixt 1640 and 1735. It has occurred to me, that a family of the Dutch name of Lindegreen (green lime-trees) resided at Hull within the last fifty years or more. Now the "junior" of this name would be called in Dutch "Lindegroen jonger," which may have originated the corruption "Land o' green ginger." This conjecture would amount to solution of the question, if the Lindegreens had about 150 years ago any property or occupation in this lane. The Dutch had necessarily much intercourse with Hull: one of their imports was the lamprey, chiefly as bait for turbot, cod, &c. obtained in the Ouse near the mouth of the Derwent; which fish was conveyed in boats in Ouse Water, and was kept alive and lively by means of poles made to revolve in these floating fish-ponds, as I was informed by an alderman prior to the reform of that ancient borough. But lamprey has now either migrated, or been exterminated by clearing the Ouse of stones5, or by the excessive cupidity of the fisherman or gastronomer.
T. J. Buckton.
Birmingham.
Sheer, and Shear Hulk (Vol. vii., p. 126.)—A sheer hulk is a mere hulk, simply the hull of a vessel unfurnished with masts and rigging. A shear hulk, on the contrary, is the hull of a vessel fitted with shears (so termed from their resemblance to the blades of a pair of shears when opened), for the purpose of masting and dismasting other vessels.
The use of the word buckle, in the signification of bend, is exceedingly common both among seamen and builders. For its use among the former I can vouch; and among the latter, see the evidence at the coroner's inquest on the late melancholy and mysterious accident at the Crystal Palace.
W. Pinkerton.
Ham.
Serpent with a Human Head (Vol. iv., p. 191.).—The following passage from Gervasius Tilberiensis (Otia Imperialia, lib. i sect. 15.) shows that the idea of the serpent which tempted Eve, having a woman's head, was current in the time of Bede. I having not had an opportunity of finding whereabouts in Bede's writings the passage quoted by Gervasius occurs:
"Nec erit omittendum, quod ait Beda, loquens de serpente qui Evam seduxit: 'Elegit enim diabolus quoddam genus serpentis fœmineum vultum habentis, quia similes similibus applaudunt, et movit ad loquendum linguam ejus."
C. W. G.
"When the maggot bites" (Vol. viii., p 244.).—An Anon correspondent asks for a note to explain the origin of the saying that thing done on the spur of the moment is done "when the maggot bites." Perhaps the best explanation is that afforded in the following passage from Swift's Discourse on the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit:
"It is the opinion of choice virtuosi that the brain is only a crowd of little animals with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and which cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan; or like bees in perpendicular swarm on a tree; or like a carrion corrupted into vermin, still preserving the shape and figure of the mother animal: that all invention is formed by the morsure of two or more of these animals upon certain capillary nerves which proceed from thence, whereof three branches spring into the tongue and two into the right hand. They hold also that these animals are of a constitution extremely cold: that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm. And that what we vulgarly call rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness to which that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies under. Farther, that nothing less than a violent heat can disentangle these creatures from their hamated station in life; or give them vigour and humour, to imprint the marks of their little teeth. That if the morsure be hexagonal, it produces poetry; the circular gives eloquence. If the bite hath been conical, the person whose nerve is so affected shall be disposed to write upon politics; and so of the rest."
J. Emerson Tennent.
Definition of a Proverb (Vol. viii., p. 242.).—The proverb, "Wit of one man, the wisdom of many," has been attributed to Lord John Russell: I think in a recent number of the Quarterly Review. The foundation was laid most probably by Bacon:
"The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs."
It may not be perhaps generally known to your readers, that in a small volume, called Origines de la Lengua Espanola, &c., por Don Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, Bibliothecario del Rei nuestro Señor, en Madrid, Año 1737, will be found a numerous collection of Spanish proverbs. A MS. note in my copy has a note, stating that the MS. made for Mayans, from the original, in the national library at Madrid, is now in the British Museum, Additional MSS., No. 9939.
The work is divided into dialogues; and in the copy in question are some remarks by a Spanish gentleman, I fear too long for your pages: but I send you an English version by a friend, of one of the couplets in the dialogues, "Diez marcos tengo de oro:"
"Ten marks of gold for the telling,
And of silver I have nine score,
Good houses are mine to dwell in,
And I have a rent-roll more:
My line and lineage please me:
Ten squires to come at my call,
And no lord who flatters or fees me,
Which pleases me most of them all."
John Martin.
Woburn Abbey.
Gilbert White of Selborne (Vol. viii., p. 244.).—Oriel College, of which Gilbert White was for more than fifty years a Fellow, some years since offered to have a portrait of him painted for their hall. An inquiry was then made of all the members of his family; but no portrait of any description could be found. I have heard my father say that Gilbert White was much pressed by his brother Thomas (my grandfather) to have his portrait painted, and that he talked of it; but it was never done.
A. Holt White.
"A Tub to the Whale" (Vol. viii., p. 220.).—In the Appendix B. to Sir James Macintosh's Life of Sir Thomas More is the following passage:
"The learned Mr. Douce has informed a friend of mine, that in Sebastian Munster's Cosmography there is a cut of a ship, to which a whale was coming too close for her safety; and of the sailors throwing a tub to the whale, evidently to play with. The practice of throwing a tub or barrel to a large fish, to divert the animal from gambols dangerous to a vessel, is also mentioned in an old prose translation of the Ship of Fools. These passages satisfactorily explain the common phrase of throwing a tub to a whale."
Sir James Macintosh conjectures that the phrase "the tale of a tub" (which was familiarly known in Sir Thomas More's time) had reference to the tub thrown to the whale.
C. H. Cooper.
Cambridge.
The Number Nine (Vol. viii., p. 149.).—The property of numbers enunciated and illustrated by Mr. Lammens resolves itself into two.
1. If from any number above nine be subtracted the number expressed by writing the same digits backwards, the remainder is divisible by nine.
2. If the number nine measure a given number, it measures the sum of its digits.
As the latter is proved in most elementary books on Algebra, I confine my proof to the former.
Let the number in question be—
a 0 + a1 . 10 + a2 . 102 + … + an-1 . 10n-1 + an . 10n
Then
an + an-1 . 10 + an-2 . 102 + … + a1 . 10n-1 + a0 . 10n
is "the same number written backwards." The difference is—
(an – a0)(10n – 1) + (an-1 – a1)(10n-2 – 1) . 10 + …
+ (an/2+1 – an/2-1)(102-1) . 10n/2-1 if n be even, but
+ (a(n+1)/2 – a(n-1)/2)(10-1) . 10(n-1)/2 if n be odd.
And every term of this difference, as involving a factor of the form (1 – 10n), is divisible by 9; and therefore the difference is divisible by 9.
C. Mansfield Ingleby.
Birmingham.
The Willingham Boy.—Abredonensis will find full information on all the points he appears from your Notices to Correspondents (Vol. viii., p. 66.) to have inquired after in—
"Prodigium Willinghamense, or Authentic Memoirs of the Life of a Boy born at Willingham, near Cambridge, with some Reflections on his Understanding, Strength, Temper, Memory, Genius, and Knowledge, by Thos. Dawkes, Surgeon."
W. P.
Unlucky Days (Vol. vii., p. 232.).—The Latin verses contained in the old Spanish breviary, adverted to by W. Pinkerton, bear a close resemblance to those which are to be found in the Red Book of the Irish Exchequer. The latter form part of a calendar which is supposed to have been written either during the reign of John or Henry III. A similar calendar, with like verses, has been printed by the Archæological Society, Dublin. As the lines in the Red Book vary in some respects from those which have appeared in "N. & Q.," I have taken the liberty of inclosing a transcript of them.
