316 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd S. N» 94., Oct. 17. '57. 



tained that it was all a pretence, and that no man 

 could reduce dollars to francs on the nail of his 

 thumb. I satisfied myself, however, that the cal- 

 culation was actually made. May not this practice, 

 which is by no means confined to the gallant Gas- 

 cons, have something to do with the above expres- 

 sion, " the rule of thumb ? " 



The phrase, however, has taken a more ex- 

 tensive range. The last joint of the thumb having 

 been considered equivalent in length to one- 

 twelfth of the Roman, of the French, and also of 

 the English foot, and therefore available as an 

 inch measure, has often been so used, and is still 

 occasionally employed in measuring cloth. Of 

 course this is no very exact measurement ; and 

 hence it comes to pass that any rough calculation 

 or estimate is said to be done by " rule of thumb." 

 I was once told that the sub-contractors for rail- 

 way excavations, in estimating the number of 

 cart-loads before making their tenders, often cal- 

 culated by " rule of thumb," thus dispensing with 

 technicalities, and taking their chance of a few 

 loads more or less. 



When searching for information respecting any 

 English phrase, especially if it is more than usually 

 striking, facetious, or significant, look for it in 

 Jamieson. The mode of making " thumb-brewed 

 ale," instanced by your correspondent as prevail- 

 ing in Yorkshire, very aptly illustrates the use of 

 the thumb, in operating " without a precise for- 

 mula." But for the phrase itself as now used, " the 

 rule of thumb," we appear to be indebted to the 

 Scottish language. " To do any thing bi/» rule of 

 thoum is to do it nearly in the way of guess-work, 

 or at hap-hazai'd. ' No rule so good as rule of 

 thumb, if it hit ; ' — when a thing falls out to be 

 right which we did at a venture." (Jamieson, 

 Supplement; where see also " Rule-o'er-thoum," 

 i.e., Eule o' the thumb.) Thomas Bots. 



One of your correspondents says this refers to a 

 practice of dipping the thumb in beer wort to test 

 its degree of heat. I should like to know why any- 

 one would dip his thumb in liquor for that purpose, 

 if he had a finger. To find the meaning of the 

 phrase there is no need to dip for it : I believe it 

 will rather be found on the surface. Amongst 

 country labourers, whose hands and fingers are 

 enlarged by griping their tools at hard work, I 

 have often seen the measure of length roughly 

 taken (where no other means were at hand) in 

 this way. Giles or Jim will very knowingly place 

 his thumb close and firm on the surface of the 

 thing to be measured, then his other thumb in 

 front of the first, and so on alternately from one 

 end to the other. " There," says he, " that's so 

 many inches : my thumb will just cover an inch." 

 " Rule of thumb " means, therefore, a rough mea- 

 surement. Bramble. 



dSitpliti to Minat ilhutvlti. 



Aneroid (2^^ S. iv. 239.) — H. W.'s derivation 

 of this word is almost as amusing as that ofgirkin 

 from Jeremiah King. It is merely a scientific 

 Greek compound to express the principle of the 

 instrument, namely, a vacuum : from o, no, arip, air, 

 and fiSos, form, with the usual v or n interposed in 

 such compounds for the sake of euphony. The 

 French is anero'ide. The upper lid of the instru- 

 ment is made sufficiently thin to yield to atmo- 

 spheric pressure over the vacuum, and according 

 to that pressure motion is given to an index, 

 whose divisions correspond to the scale of the or- 

 dinary barometer. It is much less fragile than 

 the mercurial barometer, but its indications are 

 less exact. It was invented in 1847 by M. Vedy, 

 not Vidil. See Bouillet, Diet, des Sciences. 



Apropos of barometers, one of the best bon- 

 mots ever uttered was that of the late Earl of 

 Leicester, who, when a lubberly farmer entered 

 his dining-room, and accidentally smashed the 

 barometer, exclaimed : " Well, gentlemen, I never 

 saw the mercury so low before in any weather." 

 Andrew Steinmetz. 



St. Peter as a Trojan Hero (2"'^ S. iv. 249.) — 

 In the passage quoted, Gibbon alludes to the 

 system of Father Hardouin, a Jesuit, which he 

 broached towards the end of the seventeenth 

 century, in a pamphlet entitled De numis Herodi' 

 ad2im. He maintained the absurd and extravagant 

 theory that in the thirteenth century there were 

 very few books, merely the Vulgate, Pliny, the 

 Georgics, the works of Cicero, and the satires 

 and epistles of Horace. The Emperor Frede- 

 rick II. formed the design to destroy the Christian 

 religion, by disseminating all at once a multitude 

 of books. He engaged for this purpose the Bene- 

 dictines of Germany, Italy, France, and England ; 

 and all the authors, both profane and ecclesiastical, 

 which we consider ancient, were the work of these 

 monks. R Hardouin was condemned by his su- 

 periors, and obliged to retract : he did so, but 

 without really changing his absurd opinion. 



F. C. H. 



Blue Coat Boys at Aldermen^s Funerals (2"^ S. 

 iv. 128.) — May I be permitted to mention (in 

 reference to my query on this subject) that an 

 instance of the Blue Coat Boys singing psalms at 

 a funeral is recorded by Hearne in his Diary, 

 under date November 22, 1720. He says : 



" About a fortnight or three weeks since died at Lon- 

 don, the lady Holford, widow of sir William Holford, 

 baronett. Her maiden name was Elizabeth Lewis, being 

 the daugliter of one Lewis, a coachman, of Stanton St. 

 John's, near Oxford. Being a handsome, plump, jolly 

 wench, one Mr. Harbin, who belonged to the custom 

 house, and very rich, married her, and dying, all he had 

 came to her. For tho' she had a son by him, who was gen- 

 tleman commoner of Christ Church (and the only child, as 

 1 have been informed, she ever had), yet he died very 



