284 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[Oct. 13. 1855. 



Coffee may be used beneficially to protect game 

 on a journey. 



Carefully clean your game, wrapping the heads, 

 if bruised, and covering wounded parts with ab- 

 sorbent paper. Place in box, basket, or hamper, 

 and then sprinkle over some fresh coffee, and 

 pack up. Hares, birds, or other game, may thus 

 be preserved fresh for several days. A teaspoon- 

 ful of ground coffee will be sufficient for a brace 

 of birds, or even for several brace. Care must be 

 taken to pack so as not to allow the coffee to be 

 lost on the journey. In the larder, charcoal or 

 other deodorizer may be used ; but even in such 

 places coffee will answer the purpose. 



The taint of decomposition may be removed by 

 deodorizers, if game is left in its blood ; but care- 

 ful cleaning is recommended, as, after all, clean- 

 liness is the best deodorizer. 



Robert Ravtlinson. 



Comneni. — The inference from Gibbon (Z)e- 

 cline and Fall, vol. xii. c. Ixviii. p. 241.) ie, that the 

 " imperial families of Comnenus and Palaeologus 

 are extinct ;" which he states on the authority of 

 Ducange (Fam. Byzant, p. 195.). That this was 

 not the case a few years ago as respects the Com- 

 neni, appears from the Memoirs of the Duchess 

 dAbrantes, wife of Junot (vol. viii. p. 270.), where 

 the late Emperor Alexander is represented as 

 asking her the question : '* Are you not a Com- 

 neni ? " To which the Duchess replied : " My 

 mother was, Sir." ^' Well," said he " you are of 

 blood royal, and we sovereigns are bound to aid 

 our relations in distress." The Duchess often men- 

 tions an uncle and cousin, named Comnenus, as 

 then living. T. J. Buckton, 



Lichfield. 



Lewises Collections for (he History of Printing. — 

 In the Life of Joseph Ames, prefixed to his 

 Typographical Antiquities, p. xxii., it is stated 

 that Mr. Lewis of Margate first suggested to Mr. 

 Ames the idea of writing the History of Printing 

 in England, and that Mr. Lewis himself had col- 

 lected materials for such a subject. This collec- 

 tion was in Mr. Ames's possession when he com- 

 piled his valuable work, and of which he made 

 considerable use. At Mr. Ames's sale, the folio 

 volume containing Lewis's papers was purchased 

 by Mark Cephus Tutet, F.S.A., and at the sale of 

 the latter by Mr. Herbert. This curious collec- 

 tion subsequently passed into the private library 

 of the late William Pickering, at whose sale, De- 

 cember 12, 1854 (lot 109.), it was purchased for 

 the British Museum, and is now among the Addi- 

 tional MSS., No. 20,035. J. Yeowbll. 



No. 311.] 



«att0rfCiS. 



FEESENT OF DARICS TO THE EAST INDIA 

 COMPATiTY. 



The following passage occurs in Mr. John 

 Nicholls's Itecollections and Reflections during the 

 Reign of George III, (London, 2 vols. 8vo., 

 1822) : — 



" I was informed by the late Warren Hastings, that 

 while he was Governor-General of Bengal, he sent as a 

 present to the Directors of the East India Company, one 

 hundred and seventj-^-two dareics. They had been found 

 buried in an earthen pot, on the bank of a river in the 

 province of Benares. The dareic is a gold coin of the 

 ancient Persian empire, deriving its name from the 

 Persian emperor Darius, and having on its reverse an 

 archer. In allusion to this reverse, Agesilaus, King of 

 Sparta, said, " He had been driven out of Asia by 30,000 

 archers," by which expression he meant that he had 

 been forced to relinquish his expedition by the efforts of 

 those orators in the different republics of Greece who had 

 been bribed with Persian money. Perhaps the dareic is 

 the most rare gold coin that is come down to us from 

 ancient times. There is one in the British Museum, and 

 I believe there is another in the collection of coins be- 

 longing to the King of France. I never heard but of one 

 more, and I forget in whose collection it exists. Mr. 

 Hastings told me, that when he sent these coins to the 

 Court of Directors, he considered liimself as making the 

 most munificent present to his masters that he might 

 ever have it in his power to send them. Judge of his 

 surprise when he found, on his arrival in England, that 

 these dareics had been sent to the melting-pot. I do not 

 know the names of the directors of that year ; they were 

 fortunate in not having been tried for this act by a jury 

 of antiquarians." — Vol. ii. p. 203. 



Can any of your correspondents throw light 

 upon this story ? At what time, and by whose 

 order, were the 172 darics sent home by Mr, 

 Hastings consigned to the melting-pot ? L. 



liETTERS OF KING EDWARD THE SIXTH. 



Having undertaken to edit, for the Roxburgh 

 Club, the " Literary Remains of King Edward the 

 Sixth," I shall feel much obliged to any reader of 

 " N. & Q." who will inform me of the existence of 

 autograph manuscripts of that prince ; but more 

 particularly of the present fate of the following : 



1. A Latin letter to his sister Mary, dated 

 Hunsdon, Jan. 11.; and 



2. A Latin letter to Queen Katherine from 

 Hunsdon, May 12. 



Translations of these were published in Halli- 

 well's Royal Letters, 1846, vol. ii. pp. 5. 8., as de- 

 rived from the Rawlinson MSS. ; but the Raw- 

 linson MSS. in the Bodleian Library have been 

 searched in vain for them. 



3. Letter to Queen Katharine on her marriage 

 with the Lord Admiral Seymour, dated from St. 

 James's, June 25. It was printed by Strype in 

 his Ecclesiastical Memorials, from " MSS. penes 



