2"* S. VII. June 11. '69.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



481 



■with a calculation that was made some fifty years 

 since. As G-. J. F. may wish for farther inform- 

 ation, I send you some in a tabular form. If you 

 can find a space for its insertion in " N. & Q.," it 

 may prove interesting not only to Gr. J. F., but to 

 many of your readers : — 



A Calculation, exhibiting at One View ' the Number of 

 Books, Chapters, Verses, IVords, and Letters, contained 

 in the Old and New Testaments; with other useful 

 Remarks, 



In tlie In the 



Old New Total. 



Testament. Testameht. 

 Books - - 39 27 66 



Chapters - - 929 260 1,189 



Verses - - 23,2M 7,959 31,173 



Words - - 592,439 181,258 773,697 



Letters - - 2,728,100 838,380 3,566,480 



Apocrypha. 

 Chapters - 183 Verses - 6,081 Words - 152,185 



The middle chapter, and the least ia the Bible, is Psalm 



cxvii. 

 The middle verse is the 8th of the 118th Psalm. 

 The word and occurs in the Old Testament 35,543 times. 

 The same, in the New Testament, occurs 10,684 times. 

 The word Jehovah occurs 6,855 times. 



Old Testament. 

 The middle book is Proverbs. 

 The middle chapter is Job xxix. 

 The middle verse is 2nd Chron., 20th chap,, between 17th 



and 18th verses. 

 The least verSe is 1st Chron., 1st chap., and 1st verse. 



New Testameiit. 

 The middle book is Thessalonians 2nd. 

 The middle chapter is between the 13th and 14th Romans. 

 The middle verse is 17th chap, of Acts, and 17th verse. 

 The least verse is 11th chap, of John, verse 35th. 

 The 21st verse of the 7th chap, of Ezra has all the letters 



of the alphabet. 

 The 19th chap, of the 2nd of Kings, and 37th chap, of 



Isaiah, are alike. 



J. Speed, D. 



Sewardstone. 



CLIMATE OF ENGLAND. 



(2°* S. vii. 257.) 

 The followin<» extracts from Hugh Miller's 

 Shetch-hooh of Popular Geology, may answer your 

 correspondent Jas. Dixon's Query : — 



" In some seasons, — an effect of unknown causes, — the 

 Gulf Stream impinges more strongly against our coasts 

 than at others ; it did so in 1775, Vhen Benjamin Frank- 

 lin made his recorded observations upon it,— the first of 

 any value which we possess ; and again during the three 

 mild winters that immediately succeeded the last severe 

 one, that of 1855 ; and which' owed their mildness appa- 

 rently to that very circumstance. It was found, during 

 the latter seasons, that the temperature of the sea rotind 

 our western coasts rose from one and a half to two de- 

 crees above its ordinary average ; and it must be remem- 

 ered how, during these seasons, every partial frost that 

 _Bt in at once yielded to a thaw whenever a puff of ^yind 

 'from the west carried into the atmosphere the caloric of 

 the water over which it swept. The amount of heat dis- 

 charged into the Atlantic by this great ocean-current is 



enormous Now, a depression beneath the sea of the 



North American Continent would have the effect of de- 

 priving N^thern Europe of the benefits of this great 



heating current and the British Islands, robbed 



of the Gulf Stream, would possess merely the climate 

 proper to their latitudinal position on the map; they 

 would possess such a climate as that of Labrador, where, 

 beneath seas frozen over every winter many miles from 

 the shore, exactly the same shells now live, as may be 

 found in the sub-fossil state, in the Kyles of Bute, or un- 

 derlying the pleasant town of Rothesay. A submergence 

 of the North American continent would give to Britain 

 and Ireland, with the countries of Northern Europe gene- 

 rail}', what they all seem to have possessed during the 

 protracted ages of the Pleistocene era — a glacial climate." 



The entire passage, from pp. 333. to 339., is, 

 like all that Hugh Miller wrote, well worth read- 

 ing ; while this chapter on " The Chain of Causes," 

 as well as the 1st and 2nd Lectures, contain the 

 only satisfactory and convincing statements I have 

 met with as to the " Glacial Period." The fol- 

 lowing, that " the geologist now recognises amber 

 as a vegetable production of the Middle Tertiary 

 ages," may be news to some of your readers, as it 

 was to me : — 



" It is the resin of an extinct pine, which the fossil 

 botanist has only of late learned to term the Pinus suc- 

 cinifer, or amber pine, but which the Russian peasantry, 

 who gather amber on the southern shores of the Baltic, 

 used for ages to associate with this substance, from its 

 occurrence in a fossil state in the same beds as amber 

 wood. The ornamental character of this precious resin 

 seems to have been appreciated by the native Scotch at 

 an early period : beads of amber have been found in the 

 old sepulchral barrows of the kingdom And, be- 

 sides containing fragments of the pine which produced it, 

 it has been found to contain minute pieces of four other 

 species of pine, with bits of cypresses, yews, junipers, 

 oaks, poplars, beeches, &c. — in all 48 different species of 

 shrubs and trees, which must have flourished in the 



forests where it grew In the amber, even the 



most delicate ephemeras that ever sported for a single 

 summer evening in a forest glade, and there perished as 

 the night came on, are preserved in a state of perfect en- 

 tireness. In the amber of Prussia, 800 different kinds of 

 insects have been determined, most of them belonging to 

 species, and even genera, that appear to be distinct from 

 any now known ; while of the others, some are nearly re- 

 lated to indigenous species, and some seem identical with 

 existing forms that inhabit the warmer climates of the 



south But, as happened to so many of the heroes 



of classic history, death is fame here, and by dying they 

 became immortal : for it is from the individuals who thus 

 perish that future ages are yet to learn that the species 

 which they represent ever existed, or to become ac- 

 quainted with even the generic peculiarities by which 

 they were distinguished." — H. Miller's Sketch-book of 

 Popular Geology, pp. 92 — 99. 



E. E. Btng. 



PASSAGE IN ST. MATTHEW. 



(2°i S. vii. 432.) 

 In addition to the Very Rev. Dean Trench's ob- 

 servations on the latter part of the 24th verse of 

 Matt, xxiii., rendered in all the editions of our au- 

 thorised version, as " which strain at a gnat, and 



