222 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[Sept. 22. 1855. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF LONDON. 



Thames Salmon. — la 1376, 50 Edw. III., a 

 petition to the crown prayed, that whereas the 

 sahnoii, and other fish in the Thames, was taken 

 and destroyed by engines placed to catch the fry, 

 which fry was tlaen used for feeding pigs, a law 

 might be passed to take up all the trunks (" tous 

 les trynks") between London and the sea, and 

 forbid them for time to come : also, that no salmon 

 be taken between Gravesend and Henley Bridge 

 in winter ; that is to say, between the Feast of the 

 finding of the Cross and the Epiphany ; and that 

 the river-guardians suffer no net but of large 

 mesh. The petition (which is in French) con- 

 cludes thus : " Awaiting which, most redoubtable 

 lord, if it shall please your Highness thus to make 

 order for the three next years, all your people 

 repairing to London, or bordering the river, shall 

 buy as good a salmon for two shillings as they 

 now get for ten." (Pelitiones in Parliainento.') 



Smithfield Market a Nuisance of Five hundred 

 Years' standing. — 1^80, 3 Ricliard'll. " The gen- 

 tlemen about Court, and others the frequenters 

 and inhabitants of Smithfield and Holborn, make 

 petition, that by reason of the great and horrible 

 putrescence and deadly abominations (' grantz et 

 horribles puours et abominations morteles') day 

 by day prevailing there, from corrupt blood, 

 entrails of oxen, sheep, and pigs, slain in the 

 butchery near the church of St. Nicholas at New- 

 gate, and thrown into the various ditches of two 

 enclosures (gardyns) near Holborn Bridge, the 

 aforesaid people about the Court by the infection 

 of the air have already suffered much disease, and 

 humbly pray that for their own ease and quiet- 

 ness, as well as for the honour of the city, a pe- 

 nal ordinance shall compel the butchers henceforth 

 to kill all their beasts at Knightsbridge ; or 

 wherever they shall not be a nuisance to the 

 King's subjects, on pain of forfeiting all animals 

 killed at Newgate, and imprisonment for one year ; 

 and obliging the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to 

 enforce judgment." To this petition it was re- 

 plied, that there was already an Ordinance en- 

 rolled in Chancery in the time of the late King 

 Edward, designed to remedy the evil. J. W. 



PEHMUTATING HEXAMETERS. 



In the Catholic serial The Lamp, for June 17, 

 1854, there is a paper on the " Curiosities of the 

 Anagram," in which the statement is made, as 

 from the Athenceum, that " the verse 



' Tot tibi sunt dotes, Virgo, quot sidera coelo ' 



will admit of its words being combined in 1022 

 different ways." Now this assertion, although 

 true, does not contain the whole truth, for the 

 ,. No. S08.] 



words of which the line in question is composed 

 being nine, tliey are of course susceptible of a far 

 greater number of permutations, viz. 362,880 ; 

 but as they form a verse, and as such are subject, 

 as to their position, to the laws of prosody (for in- 

 stance, the line cannot begin or end with tihi, or 

 end with sidei-a, &c.), the number of permutations 

 is greatly restricted, -but not so far, as a subse- 

 quent quotation will show, as to 1022. The mis- 

 statement is of course of little moment ; but its 

 rectification allows me to notice a forgotten curi- 

 osity of literature, of which no mention is made 

 by Sir A. Croke or Mr. Sandys in their respective 

 essays on Rhyming Latin Verse and Macaronic 

 Poetry, to neither of which classes oi facetice, in- 

 deed, it can be said to belong. The title of the 

 work in question is as follows : 



" Eryci Pvteani Pietatis Thvmata in Bevnardi Bavhvsi 

 ^ societate Jesv Protevm Parthenivm, Vnius Libri Ver- 

 svm, Vnius Versvs Librum. Stellarum numero, siueformis 

 M.xxii., variatum. Antverpiae, Ex Officina Plantiniana, 

 M.DC.xvii., folio, pp. 122." 



The author of this laborious trifle was Henri 

 Dupuy, otherwise Van de Putte, better known 

 under his Latinised cognomen of Erycius Putea- 

 nus. He was a native of Vanlo in Guelders, and 

 occupied the chair of" Belles-Lettres at the Uni- 

 versity of Louvain for the greater part of his life. 

 To a notice of this author and his works in the 

 Biog. Universelle, torn. xii. p. 323., is appended 

 the following note in relation to the v^rse, of the 

 repetition of which in its various forms the book 

 mainly consists : 



" Ce vers imagine par le P. Bauhuys, je'suite de Lou- 

 vain, peut re'eliement se retourner de 3312 maniferes, comme 

 I'a demon tre Jacq. Bernouilli dans son Ars conjectandi ; 

 mais Dupuy, voulant suivre I'allegorie indiquee par le 

 vers meme, s'en est tenu a 1022, nombie des etoiles fixes 

 dans tous les catalogues des anciens astronomes. Les 

 amateurs de semblables bagatelles citent les vers suivant 

 de Th. Lansius : 



' Crux, faex, fraus, lis, mars, mors, nox, pus, sors, mala, 

 Styx, vis,' 



qui peut former 39,916,800 combinaisons differentes." 



I have seen complicated statements, which have 

 appeared to me to be erroneous, as to the number 

 of permutations of which a " letter padlock " is 

 susceptible. Let such a lock be composed of Ji 

 revolving rings, each ring containing x letters of 

 the alphabet then I imagine that the formula .r" ; 

 will correctly express the permutability of the in- 

 strument. William Bates. 

 Birmingham. 



CONINGSBY FAMILY. 



In Vol. vi., p. 406., I gave an account of a sin- 

 gular memorial erected iii the churchyard of 

 Areley-Kings, AVorcestershire, to " Sir Harry " 

 Coningsby, who, I slated, had previously lived in 



