186 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2»d s. No 88., Sept. 5. '57. 



by another, was performed; which was followed by a 

 Grand Concert of music, conducted by the best performers 

 in this country. An elegant cold collation was served 

 up, and a generous glass circled round the company, who 

 spent a truly Attic evening, and perfectly enjoyed — 



" * The feast of reason, and the flow of soul.' 



Edinburgh Evening Courant for Saturday, 

 September 9." 



" It is well known to those who are conversant in lite- 

 rary affairs how severely Monsieur de Voltaire has been 

 treated for omitting, when he records facts, to quote his 

 authorities. He has been censured as a careless, vague, 

 incorrect writer ; as a man of no learning and little depth ; 

 and it has been ignorantly enough asserted, that the 

 reason why he has not produced his documents is — that 

 he was not abk to produce them. This error our author 

 very judiciously here endeavours to avoid." 



G.N. 



DIVINATION. 



The following piece of conjuring was commu- 

 nicated to me by a friend. It is so very simple 

 to those who are fit to see the rationale that I 

 shall not explain it, in order that the adepts may 

 have the use of it. The person who is to be 

 astonished is directed to think of one of the num- 

 bers 1, 2 9 and put it by. He is then told 



to write down any number he pleases, no matter 

 of how many figures, to write down a number 

 made of the same figures in another order, and to 

 subtract one from the other. Suppose he thinks 

 of 17629738, and proceeds as follows : 



17629738 



93768172 



76138434 

 He is then told to take the number of letters in 

 his father's and mother's Christian names, and in 

 the name of one of the apostles, and to add them 

 together, to multiply this number by 4, the in- 

 verted number by 5, and to add to both of 

 these put together the number he first thought 

 of. Say William Henry, Jane, Peter, 21 letters 

 in all, 12 when inverted ; 4 times 21 is 84, 5 

 times 12 is 60, and, 8 being the number thought 

 of, 84, 60, 8, make 152. This 1, 5, 2 he is to mix 

 up with the 7, 6, 1, &c. above in any order he 

 pleases, and to give the list to the conjuror. Say 

 he gives 



31182457364 

 All this he has done in private. The conjuror sees 

 nothing but this list of figures, and tells him im- 

 mediately that the figure he thought of was 8. 



A. De Morgan. 



Minat ^ateS. 



A Hint to Architects. — Allow me to call your 

 attention to (what appears to me) an absurd 

 custom, viz. placing in the fronts of new houses 



old figures or dates belonging to some ancient 

 building near the spot. In Ironmonger Lane, 

 adjoining the Mercers' Hall, there have been 

 erected lately two new houses, and in the fronts 

 there is in the centre of one house the figure of a 

 woman with the date 1668, and in the other house 

 that of a man with a crown, without any other 

 reference. Now some day when the smoke has 

 sufficiently " aged " these houses, persons not ac- 

 quainted with the fact will suppose these houses 

 of a much greater age than they are really. It 

 appears to me that whenever these old relics are 

 inserted in walls, there should be also a reference 

 when the place was rebuilt. 



A Constant Reader. 



Irish Freaks of Nature. — Philip Luckombe, 

 who published a Tour through Ireland, London, 

 1783, says, when at Cork, — 



"Among other things, I was here shown a set of 

 knives and forks, whose handles were made of a bony 

 substance, or excrescence, that grew out of the heels of the 

 wonderful ossified body of the man I saw in Trinity 

 College, Dublin ; he was a native of this place. These 

 bones grew in the form of a cock's-spur, but much larger, 

 as j'ou may easily imagine, since the handles are of a 

 common size. They were not sawed off, but fell yearly, 

 like the horns of a stag, without any force, or pain to the 

 limbs that bore them. They were well polished, and of a 

 very hard substance, equal to ivory, though not so white." 



The oldest inhabitant of this place now never 

 heard of these curiosities ; they may perchance be 

 in some museum elsewhere. A full account of 

 Clark's skeleton, and his extraordinary case, will 

 be found, with an engraving, in Smith's Hist, of 

 the CO. Cork. R. C. 



Cork. 



Blackguard. — In the ballad, *' Voyage of R. 

 Baker to Guinie," 1562, Hakluyt, edit, of 1589 

 (which bears strong marks of truthfulness), we 

 find a mention of the time (dis) honoured black- 

 guard : 



" Our maisters mate his pike eftsoons. 

 Strikes through his targe and throat. 

 The capteine now past charge 

 Of this brutish Blacke gard, 

 His pike he halde backe vr^ in targe 

 Alas were fixed hard." 



The application of the term to a truculent 

 negro is charmingly appropriate. E. H. E. 



Singular Tenures in Warwickshire. — The fol- 

 lowing is a cutting from a late number of the 

 Birmingham Journal : — 



" In the General View of the Agriculture of the County 

 of Warwick, by Adam Murray, 8vo., 1816, p. 26., the 

 following instances are given : — At Hampton-in-Arden, 

 if a man possessed of an estate marries, and has several 

 children by the issue of that marriage, lie cannot give it 

 away by will without his wife's consent, nor does it de- 

 scend to his children; but the wife, after the death of 

 her husband, has then the absolute power to give it to 

 the children of another person, or to whom she pleases. 



