250 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. No 39., Skpt. 27. '56. 



The editor, whose name does not appear, gives 

 no account in the preface of " this eminent phy- 

 sician lately dead," any information respecting 

 whom will be most welcome to Magdalenensis. 



Minav (Sucrte^ in it!) ^njStocr^. 



" Etitis." — What is the stone Etitis, mentioned 

 by Aristotle ? T. W. W. 



Brighton. 



[jEtites, or Eagle-stone, is a flint, or crustated and 

 hollow stone, found in slates of our common pebbles; it 

 rattles on being shaken, and contains a nucleus. Many 

 miraculous properties were attributed to it by the an- 

 cients; such as the prevention of abortion, the discovery 

 of thieves, &c. There is also an idle popular story, that 

 the female eagle (aerds, whence its name, atites), takes 

 up this stone into her nest, while she is sitting, to prevent 

 her eggs being rotten. They are at first soft, and become 

 hard by their exposure to the atmosphere. Near Trevoux, 

 in France, they are verj' numerous. — Ency. 3fetropoU- 

 tana.'] 



Rhyming Dictionary. — Has there ever been 

 published a Dictionary to assist poets in the se- 

 lection of rhymes ? If there has not, I should 

 think it would be a j^ood " spec " for some of your 

 learned correspondents to undertake the manu- 

 facturing of one. If one has been published, per- 

 haps you can inform me who is the publisher and 

 the price of it. C. J. Douglas. 



[The Muses ha'je already provided for their embryo 

 pupils the following works : Walker's Dictionary of the 

 English Language, answering at once the Purposes of Rhym- 

 ing, Spelling, and Pronouncing, 8vo., Lond., 1775; and 

 Jjysshe's Art of English Poetry, luith a Dictionary of 

 Rhymes, 6th edit., 2 vols., Lond., 1714.] 



Quotation wanted : " Thinking" ^c. — Who is 

 the author of these lines ? 

 " Thinking is but a useless waste of thought, 

 For naught is everything, and everything is naught." 



Anon. 



[The lines are from The Rejected Addresses, from 

 Cui Bono, a poem in which Byron was cleverly imitated, 

 and run thus : 

 " Thinking is but an idle waste of thought. 



For nought is everything, and everything is nought."] 



Wills, a Portrait Painter. — About the middle 

 of the last century flourished a painter of the 

 name of Wills, and on one of Faber's mezzotints 

 (1748), I observe that he is called T. Wills. I 

 have a letter, written in 1764, signed James Wills, 

 who, by the subject of his communication, was 

 evidently a painter also. Query, Whether there 

 were two painters of this name flourishing about 

 the same time ? Were they father and son, or 

 otherwise connected ? When did they die, par- 

 ticularly T. Wills ? Patonce. 



[Anoticeof the Eev. James Wills, portrait painter, will 

 be found in Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, by Allan 

 Cunningham.] 



HUMAN SKIN TANNED, ETC. 



(2"i S. ii. 68. 119. 157.) 



The Royal Infirmary at Bristol boasts of a 

 valuable anatomical museum, formed by the late 

 Mr. Richard Smith, who was senior surgeon of 

 that institution from 1796 until his decease, which 

 took place at Clifton, Jan. 24, 1843. He was 

 one of the leading men of his day, as well known 

 for his high professional character and attainments 

 in metropolitan circles as he was in his own neigh- 

 bourhood. In the west of England he might be 

 termed " the Bristol Cheselden," quaint and 

 curious, a frequent contributor on historical sub-' 

 jects to the Gentleman's Magazine, as also to Felix 

 Farley's Journal, a local paper imbued with much 

 of the spirit of Sylvanus Urban. His contribu- 

 tions to these serials exhibit neither inconsiderable 

 merit nor inaccurate research. Amongst his 

 peculiarities, Mr. Smith had almost a morbid 

 curiosity in criminal cases; a trait of character 

 that may be veiled as a love of forensic medicine. 

 This is well seen in his museum, — a small but 

 sombre apartment containing a valuable collec- 

 tion of pathological and anatomical preparations. 

 Amongst them, an assortment of calculi, well 

 arranged and clearly catalogued, is second, I be- 

 lieve, to none in value and interest. The most 

 striking feature, however, indicating the bias of 

 the founder's mind, is the memorabilia of criminals 

 who have expiated their crimes upon the scaffold, 

 and contributed to science by yielding their bodies 

 to the scalpel. Articulated skeletons of these 

 seem to grin the more horribly from the juxta- 

 position of the fatal cap and rope. Whilst to 

 complete the scene, relics of the victim lie near in 

 the shape of fractured vertebra or battered and 

 trephined skull. Amidst other subjects none is 

 more interesting than that of John Horwood. He 

 was a youth of eighteen, the first criminal hanged 

 at Bristol New Drop, April 13, 1821, for the mur- 

 der, under aggravated circumstances, of his sweet- 

 heart, Eliza Balsum, at Hanham, by hurling a 

 stone at her. In a case against the wall of the 

 museum hangs the skeleton of this malefactor. 

 Near it lies a book compiled by Mr. Smith, evi- 

 dently " con aniore," in which are enshrined the 

 most minute details of the murder. And I ven- 

 ture to say that a peep into it will repay the 

 curious for the scrutinising research displayed, 

 worthy a nobler theme. Cuttings from news- 

 papers : — the actual indictment ; briefs of the 

 counsel ; correspondence, of which I give a speci- 

 men below ; broad-sheets in the Catnach style, 

 not excepting prints of the judge, the chaplain, 

 pencil sketch of the corpse, chart of phi'enological 

 development, and disquisition, &c., altogether 

 forming a collection that exhausts the repulsive 



