12 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd S. No 30., July 26. '56. 



French carried out two generations ago ; but let 

 us not have recourse to their little units in pre- 

 ference to our great units. Let those who like to 

 keep their accounts in ten-pences do so ; but the 

 pound sterling, and its decimal subdivisions, is the 

 right thing in the right place. Fbed, Hendbiks. 



NOTES ON TREES AND FLOWERS (1'* S. i. 173. 



457. ; xi. 460. ; xii. 71. 211.) : green rose (P* 

 S. xii. 143. 234. 371. 481.) 



When the Isiac veil thrown over ancient re- 

 ligion by genealogies, fables, and etymologies, 

 shall be withdrawn, it will be evident that the 

 spirit of Nature has been impressed on all the 

 female deities. These personages are not mere 

 maids of honour, and she only the queen, but 

 through all the disguises under which she is 

 masked she breaks forth, O Dea certe, whether 

 represented by the moon or by the earth, by the 

 polyonymous Isis, or by the myrianthous Venus : 



"All tlie Graces," says Thryllitius*, "in producing the 

 rose appear anxiously to have endeavoured the utmost 

 they could effect ; wherefore it is no wonder that such a 

 multitude of fables was created respecting the flower de- 

 dicated to Venus. Having diligently examined," con- 

 tinues our author, " the legends of Anacreon and others, 

 I am persuaded that it is so named atri tou po0ov to poSov, 

 and having considered the legends, according to which 

 the rose originated either with Venus, or from the blood 

 of Venus, or from the gore of Adonis, or from the nectar 

 spilt by Cupid's negligence, or lastly, frbtii the influx of 

 the star Venus, I could not refrain from suspecting some- 

 thing of this kind. On all sides is discovered an abun- 

 dant flow of love, a manifest power of nature, productive 

 of vegetation. Moreover, the leaves of the flower afford 

 a most elegant spectacle, winding in the nianner of little 

 waves around their ungues, and in their first spontaneous 

 budding, effected by the law of the Almighty Creator, all 

 plants appear to be evolved by the same undulating 

 motion formed by an inherent force of nature, the know- 

 ledge of which antiquity perhaps intended to preserve by 

 the name given to this king of flowers. I shall therefore 

 be pleased to declare that in all those fables there is no- 

 thing involved but the general history of the production 

 of all plants, intended by the example of the rose." 



He then explains, according to Bayle's theory, 

 the generation of plants, now nourished by the 

 constant influence of dew and showers, from juices 

 adapted to them, and evolved by the moisture 

 prepared by Divine Omnipotence in the bowels of 

 the earth. He shows that the first founders of 

 these fables seem not to have been strangers to 

 this opinion, and explains how in the fable of 

 Cassianus Bassus physical properties may be alle- 

 gorized by Mars, Adonis, and Venus. 



The same writer enumerates the varieties of 

 roses, one of which is derived from the colour of 

 the flower, since in some it is found white, in 

 others purple, in others flesh colour, in others 



* Plantarum Historia Fabularis, 4to., Vitembergae, X713. 



pale, in others yellow, in others mixed, in others 

 light green, if, according to Costaeus, it is en- 

 grafted on Agrifolii arluscuh. 



BiBLIOTHECAR. ChETHAM. 



Can you find room among the fresh leaves of 

 " N. & Q." for a newly blown rose ? It was ob- 

 tained from a " cutting " which I enclose (from a 

 Chester newspaper, June 25), and will be best 

 propagated by being transferred to your columns. 



" INIr. W. H. Osborne, of Perry Pont House, Perry Bar, 

 Staffordshire, has a perfectly green rose in flower in his 

 new rose-house. The rose, called Rosa Verdifora, is of a 

 full rich green. The tree was procured from a French 

 nurseryman." 



F. Phillott. 



MUSICAL NOTATION. 



On Music ; and suggestions for improvement in its symbols, 

 or nomenclature of sounds : to the end that there may be a 

 clearer demonstration of the ratios of sounds, and, by con- • 

 sequence, a more extended knowledge of the fundus of this 

 art, that is the poetrj' or measured relation of its forms. 



The readers of "N. & Q." (2"<> S. ii. 14.) must 

 have been much pleased in perusing the article on 

 " Musical Notation," by so distinguished a writer 

 as Professor de Morgan. For myself, as a 

 musician, I consider every exercise of the mathe- 

 matician on the subject matter of music as a step 

 to that which eventually must take place — the 

 union of the mathematician with the musician : 

 that which Professor de Morgan has made out 

 as a case of distress I have long felt to be a case of 

 necessity. The symbols and terras now used in 

 the grammar of music render any clear explana- 

 tion of music as poetry most difficult. 



The modern definition of music declares it to 

 be " the art of continuing tunable sounds in a 

 manner agreeable to the ear ; " but the old Pagan 

 theorist declares music to be " the art of finding 

 beauty in sounds by means of their ratios or 

 measure.''' And this is true ; for from the begin- 

 ning of the world all music has been made upon 

 one principle, that is to say, the doctrine of the 

 proportions of the scale. Music is caused by un- 

 dulations in the atmosjjhere which gather them- 

 selves together into a series of geometrical figures 

 in the ether. Although the hearing is in our 

 bodily frame, the causation of the hearing is the 

 geometric figure in motion. The sound is the 

 affection ; the aerial pulsation the cause of the 

 affection. It exists to us as an affection of the 

 nervous and muscular organism ; but when we 

 seek to deal with it as centrical, relative, a whole, 

 or an aliquot part of some whole, we must know 

 something more of it than a mere sensible proper, 

 or bare sensation. Effects are facts, but causes 

 are anterior facts. The existence in nature of the 



