16 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°« S. X. July 7. '60. 



And for a tablet of parchment the following : — 

 " Esse puta ceras, licet haee membrana vocetur : 

 Delebis, quoties scripta novare voles." — lb. 7. 



Here the use of a substance capable of making a 

 black mark on ivory or parchment, and sus- 

 ceptible of being erased at pleasure, would seem 

 to point to black-lead. J. Emerson Tennent. 



Descriptive Catalogue (2°* S. ix. 403.) — 

 I doubt much whether any book was ever pub- 

 lished which would aid G. H. K. in this respect ; 

 as, so far as description is concerned, one library is 

 no guide for another, but each must be taken en- 

 tirely per se. If G. H. K. means a classified cata- 

 logue, nothing will serve his purpose better than 

 the Rev. T. H. Home's Outlines for the Classifi- 

 cation of a Lihrary submitted to the Consideration 

 of the Trustees of the British Museum, 1825, 4to. 



G. M. G. 



Library discovered at Willscot Glebe- 

 House (2°''S. ix.511.) — As editor of the Southern 

 Times, I really think I have a right to complain 

 of the supercilious tone of Mr. J. G. Nichols in 

 questioning its authority for the announcement 

 of a simple fact. As an occasional contributor to 

 " N. & Q." (though under a nom de plume) there 

 would be as much probability of such a statement 

 finding its way to me as soon as to any other 

 journalist. . Besides, I can probably offer Mr. 

 JSTiCHOLs a better authority in my principal paper, 

 the Dorset County Chronicle, which, it is well 

 known, is constantly in communication with the 

 dignified and other clergy on similar subjects; 

 and I have no doubt that it was from the Dorset 

 County Chronicle that the paragraph in question 

 found its way into the Southern Times. As for 

 the truth of it, your correspondent has a far more 

 obvious test open to him than calling in question 

 the authenticity of a newspaper paragraph going 

 the rounds, and that is, by addressing himself to 

 the incumbent of Willscot for the Catalogue he de- 

 sires of the books recovered. What puzzles me 

 most in Mr. Nichols is, that he denies the minor 

 proposition, yet labours to establish the major, — 

 denies that books have been discovered at Wills- 

 cot because the authority is no better than that 

 of the Southern Times, but proves conclusively 

 nevertheless that such things are as books in 

 bricked- up closets, and are most wonderful ! 



Sholto Macduff. 



In reference to the paragraph in " N. & Q." 

 (2"* S. ix. 511.) relative to the library found in 

 Oxfordshire, I may inform thee that on first seeing 

 the paragraph in a local paper, I immediately 

 wrote to the clergyman of the place, who politely 

 informed me that no such library has been found, 

 and no such person as therein named is known in 

 his. parish. I therefore presume the whole is a 

 hoax. James Dix, 



Grosvenor Mount, Headingley, Leeds. 



The Gold Ants of Herodotus. (2"^ S. ix. 

 443.) — Humboldt says as follows (Bohn's edition 

 of Cosmos, vol. V. p. 475.) : — 



" I was the more astonished at finding at Capula and " 

 Pazcuaro, and especiall}- near Yurisapundaro, all the ant- 

 hills filled with beautifully shining grains of obsidian 

 and sanidine. This was in the month of September, 1803. 

 .... I was amazed that such small insects should be 

 able to drag the minerals to such a distance. It has 

 given me great pleasure to find that an active investi- 

 gator, M. Jules Marcou, has observed something exactly 

 similar. ' There exists,' he says, ' on the high plateaux 

 of the Rocky Mountains, and particular!}' in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Fort Defiance (to the west of Mount Taylor), 

 a species of ant which, instead of using fragments of 

 wood and vegetable remains for the purpose of building 

 its dwelling, emploj's only small stones of the size of a 

 grain of maize. Its instinct leads it to select the most 

 brilliant fragments of stones ; and thus the ant-hill is 

 frequently filled with magnificent transparent gai-neta, 

 and very pure grains of quartz.' (Jules Marcou, R6$um6 

 Explicatif d'une Carte Geogn.des Etats Unis, 1855, p. 3.)" 



A like desire for the accumulation of brilliantly- 

 coloured or shining substances leads the bower 

 bird to decorate his play-ground with glass, shells, 

 and brightly-coloured feathers ; and teaches crows 

 and majjpies the very inconvenient habit of ap- 

 propriating coins and small articles of plate. I 

 have myself often seen the great water-beetle 

 {Dytiscus marginalis), while in confinement, select 

 from the shingle at the bottom of his prison grains 

 of red cornelian and fragments of pink carbonate 

 of lime, and carry them about for a long time. 

 This was not the habit of a single individual ; I 

 have seen many of these insects do the same. 

 Whether the lustre of the objects had charms for 

 them, or whether they mistook the stones for bits 

 of raw meat or worms, I cannot say : certainly 

 they bit them savagely with their mandibles, re- 

 minding me rather amusingly of "The Viper and 

 the File." W. J. Bernhard Smith. 



Mural Burial (2"^ S. ix. 425.) — The reasons 

 which suggested that the walls of the church were 

 tolerated depositories for the dead has for some 

 time been a subject of discussion in " N. & Q.," 

 but towards a satisfactory conclusion little, if any, 

 progress has been made. 



The discoveries of bodies there interred have 

 been too numerous to require any farther refer- 

 ence, either to the forms of the cavities, the places 

 in which they are generally found, or the shape 

 or materials of which the coffins are formed. 



But where Interments have been made far more 

 injurious to the fabric, and not strictly within the 

 walls, a short description of such remnants of 

 former mischievous indulgences, happily not com- 

 mon, may assist the inquiry. 



In the churches of South Waltham St. Mary 

 and of Easton, both in Norfolk, about eight or 

 ten feet of the east walls of the chancels have been 

 removed to the base of the windows, and arches 

 turned to support the superincumbent walls. 



