86o 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cap that was worn over the coif of white silk 

 or linen that formed the head-dress of the 

 sergeants-at-law from whom the judges were 

 selected. The procurations paid to an arch- 

 deacon of the Church of England are a 

 money composition in lieu of his ancient 

 right of quartering himself and his attend- 

 ant horsemen on the parochial clergy during 

 his visitations. Fee-farm rents, as they are 

 called, are in many cases survivals of pay- 

 ments for services no longer rendered. Canon 

 Taylor pays a rent of this kind, which repre- 

 sents a composition for a certain number of 

 thraves or sheaves of corn, which his prede- 

 cessors in title rendered to the Abbot of 

 Beverley for his services in " correcting the 

 villans " of a certain parish, who might 

 avail themselves of the privilege of sanctu- 

 ary that was conferred by Athelstan on the 

 monks. The unchronicled history of English 

 villages may be largely recovered from the 

 study of such anomalous survivals. Sir 

 Henry Maiue and Mr. Seebohm in England, 

 and Von Maurer and Prof. Nasse in Ger- 

 many, have made some valuable researches 

 in this line, and Mr. G. L. Gomme has added 

 to them. The last author explains a dupli- 

 cate municipal jurisdiction that used to pre- 

 vail at Rochester by assuming that there was 

 a community there of Danish origin, gov- 

 erned by its own laws and officers, but sub- 

 ordinate to the rule of the Saxon community. 

 Canon Taylor also cites a more striking case 

 at Exeter, where Mr. Kerslake has succeeded 

 in delimitating the boundaries of the Celtic 

 and Saxon communities which dwelt side by 

 side within the walls. 



Early Printing at Avignon. Documents 

 have been recently discovered by the Abb6 

 Requin that go to show that printing was 

 practiced at Avignon before Gutenberg in- 

 troduced it in Mentz. They record that in 

 1444 one Procopius Valdfoghel (Waldvogel), 

 a goldsmith of Prague, was living at Avig- 

 non, and instructed two students there 

 Manaud Vitalis and Arnaud de Coselhac in 

 the art of artificial writing and furnished 

 them with the instruments for it, consist- 

 ing of two abecedaria of metal and two iron 

 formes, a steel screw, forty-eight formce 

 of tin, and other implements. About the 

 same time Valdfoghel instructed one Davin, 

 of Caderousse, a Jew, in the same art ; and 



two years later, on the 10th of March, 1446, 

 he entered into an agreement with the Jew 

 to supply him with twenty-seven Hebrew 

 letters cut in iron, and other implements for 

 the practice of printing. At the same time 

 the Jew agreed not to disclose the art, either 

 in theory or practice, to any one as long as 

 Valdfoghel remained at Avignon or in the 

 neighborhood. A partnership was formed 

 between Valdfoghel and his two former 

 students, from which Vitalis retired in April, 

 1446, giving up his share in the implements, 

 whether of iron, steel, copper, lead, and 

 other metals, or of wood. He also made 

 oath on the Holy Gospels that the art of arti- 

 ficial writing taught him by Valdfoghel was 

 a true art, and easy and useful to any one 

 who desired to work at it and was fond of 

 it. It is questioned whether this declaration 

 was obtained to avoid the imputation of sor- 

 cery, or to commit Vitalis to an assertion 

 that the invention was a successful one. 

 These transactions took place while Guten- 

 berg was still experimenting at Strasburg, 

 and their date, if confirmed, would fix Avig- 

 non, instead of Mentz, as the second city 

 where printing was carried on. 



Sparrows and Robins. Another attack 

 on the English sparrow is made by C. B. 

 Cook in a Bulletin of the Michigan Agricult- 

 ural Experiment Station. No new charge 

 is made against the sparrows, nor is any new 

 proof adduced of the old charges that when 

 too numerous they are a nuisance and that 

 they drive away other birds. We respect, if 

 we do not love them, for the good they have 

 done in clearing city trees of measuring- 

 worms. As to their incompatibility with 

 other birds, we have the witness of one 

 suburb of New York, where the sparrows 

 have been the longest and have multiplied 

 the most, that since the law came in to pro- 

 tect other birds against the man with a 

 gun and the boy with a stone, the robins 

 have been increasing very fast, are not 

 troubled by the sparrows, and during the 

 past spring were more often seen than they. 

 Thus the assertion that man, not sparrows, 

 is responsible for the recent scarcity of 

 song and friendly birds is confirmed. Mr. 

 Cook's paper furnishes an amusing if not 

 pleasant illustration of the folly of offering 

 bounties for the destruction of sparrows. 



