2'«» & VII. Jan. 22. '69.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



79 



was insensible to the timorous superstitions of his age, 

 and he compelled the physician to repeat his experiment, 

 which in the end proved perfectly successful." — Fev' 

 dinand and Isabella, vol. i. p. 141. 



The (late of this operation seems to be about 

 1468 or 1469. F. P. L. 



Fish mentioned in " Havelok the Dane" : " SiuU" 

 and ''Schulle" (2"'* S. vi. 232. 317. 382.) — In Sir 

 Thomas Browne's account of " Fishes, &c., found 

 in Norfolk and on the Coast" {WorkSf vol. iii. 

 pp. 323. 335., Bohn's Antiq. Zi&.], he says of the 

 mackerel (^Scombri) : 



" Sometimes they are of a very large size ; and one was 

 taken this year, 1668, which was by measure an ell long, 

 and of the length of a good salmon, at Lowestoft." 



Such a one would be called a stull^ and it is of 

 this word that I desire the derivation. 



It is, notwithstanding its size, a real mackerel ; 

 whereas of the horse-mackerel Sir Thomas says : 



" Before the herrings there commonly cometli a fish 

 about a foot long, by fishermen called a horse, resembling 

 in all points the trachurus of Rondeletius, of a mixed 

 shape between a mackerel and a herring; observable 

 from its green eyes, rarely sky-coloured back after it is 

 kept a day, and an oblique bony line running on the out- 

 side from the gills unto tlie tail ; a dry and hard dish, 

 but makes a handsome picture." 



The "schulle" of Havelok, however, is clearly 

 not the sole, as the Roxburgh editor suprgests, but 

 a different fish : for, in the same volume, there is 

 the following note : — 



•" In MS. Sloan, 1784, 1 find this distich, with the sub- 

 sequent explanatory notes attached : — 



" ' Of wry-mouthed fish give me the left side black*. 

 Except the sole'^f, which hath the noblest smack.' 



And Sir Thomas himself says, after enximerat- 

 ing turbot, plaice, and butts of various kinds, 

 " The Passer squamosus, bret, bretcock, and skulls, 

 comparable in taste and delicacy unto the sole." 

 This "skull," whatever it is, is no doubt the 

 "schulle" of Havelok, and a flat and "wry- 

 mouthed" fish, distinct from the sole and the stull, 

 which seems no separate name, but a word ex- 

 pressive of size, and must have some equivalent 

 in one of the allied languages. E. S. Tayloe. 



Southeys " The Holly Tree'' (2"'^ S. vii. 26.) — 

 I believe Southey is correct in his natural his- 

 tory. At all events, I have seen tall hollies. I 

 may instance those growing at the " High Rocks," 

 near Tunbridge Wells ; and in which the upper 

 leaves, young and old alike, have a smooth edge. 

 The young leaves of the lower branches, and of 

 the whole tree, except in the case of very tall 

 specimens, though too soft to penetrate the skin, 

 still have a serrated edge. 



It is only in exceptional cases that the upper 



* " ' As turbot, bret, bretcock, skulls, 

 t " ' Which is black on the right side ; as also butts, 

 sandaps, and flounders.' " 



leaves can be readily examined. The hollies I 

 have mentioned grow close to a precipitous rock, 

 by ascending which the upper leaves may be 

 easily inspected. On the first occasion of my see- 

 ing them from the higher level, I was so com- 

 pletely deceived by their unusual appearance, that 

 I could scarcely believe they were leaves of holly, 

 until I had satisfied myself by examining the 

 lower branches. S. C. 



NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC. 



The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, edited 

 by Peter Cunningham, now first chronologically arranged, 

 in Nine Volumes. Vol. IX. (Bentley.) * 



This goodly volume of nearly seven hundred pages com- 

 pletes the handsome library edition of the letters of the 

 greatest and wittiest of English letter-writers, which Mr. 

 Bentley has issued under the editorship of Mr. Peter 

 Cunningham. We say that this volume completes the 

 edition, and it does so in a very important respect. We 

 do not so much refer to the new letters which appear in 

 it, and they are some thirty in number — or to the correc- 

 tions — and they are not unimportant — of the Montagu 

 Letters, or to the extracts from the unpublished corre- 

 spondence of the Earl and Countess of Hertford with 

 Horace Walpole, — and they are of considerable interest, — 

 but to the elaborate Index, occupying nearly a hundred 

 double-columned pages, and by means of which one can 

 readily find out all the gossip and scandal which Horace 

 Walpole has recorded of his various acquaintances, aristo- 

 cratic;|and archaeological, political, literary, and artistic, 

 in the two thousand six hundred and sixtj'-five letters 

 which are here preserved, to show how unflagging was his 

 spirit, how unceasing his search after " some new thing," 

 and how indefatigable was his bitter, but ready pen. 

 When the social history of England is written, that of 

 the Upper Ten Thousand as it existed during the reigns 

 of the Second and Third Georges, must be gathered from 

 the piquant sketches which Horace Walpole dashed off, 

 not more for the amusement of his friends, than for the 

 gratification of his own love of gossip. Mr. Bentlej' has 

 done good service to literature by reproducing these mas- 

 terpieces of the art of letter- writing in the form which the 

 work has now Assumed. The nine volumes of The Letters 

 of Horace Walpole now first Chronologically Arranged, vi\\\, 

 for the future, be the only edition to be found in a well- 

 assorted library. We ought to add that the present 

 volume is illustrated with portraits of Walpole's three 

 Waldegrave nieces, from Sir Joshua Reynolds' celebrated 

 picture ; with a portrait of Miss Berry, from Mrs. Darner's 

 bust ; with the portraits of Sir Robert Walpole and his 

 first wife, Catherine Shorter ; with a portrait of Sir Ro- 

 bert's sister Dorothy, Viscountess Townsend, from the 

 picture by Jewar ; and, lastly, with the portrait of Horace 

 Walpole himself, from the picture by Eckhardt. 



Poems and Ballads of Goethe, translated by W. Edmond- 

 stone Aytoun, D.C.L., and Theodore Martin. (Black- 

 wood & Sons.) 



It is long since mere English readers were furnished 

 with a more striking proof than is exhibited in these ad- 

 mirable translations of the capabilities of our good Saxon 

 tongue to do justice to the masterpieces of any of the 

 writers of the Continent, however fanciful may be their 

 conceptions, and however elaborate their finish. The 

 smaller poems of Goethe have long been considered by 

 many of his adnairers as among the most perfect and 



