Aug. 12. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



125 



CAPTAIN THOMAS DKtJMMOND. 



Who was Captain Thomas Drummond, the 

 commander of the Scots Darien ship, the Speedy 

 Return, for whose alleged murder Captain Green, 

 of the English ship Worcester, suffered at Edin- 

 burgh in 1705 ? 



Among the bitter things which this unliappy 

 affair produced in London, was a broadside en- 

 titled An Elegy on the much lamented Death of 

 Capt. T. G.i who was executed, with others of his 

 Crew, wider the pretence of being a Pirate, Sfc. 

 In this there is the following allusion to the sub- 

 ject of my Query, where the writer speaks of 

 Green's escape from the ordinary perils of a 

 voyage only, on ^he " inhospitable shore " of Scot- 

 land, to 



"find Avhat Madagascar would forbear, 



E'en the' detested Drummond harbours there ; 

 Drummond, whose hands with Glencoe's blood embrued, 

 Show murders by just judgments unpursued, 

 Drummond ! the widows' tears, and orphans' cries, 

 A guilty name for which the guiltless dies." 



I am aware proof exists that, whatever may have 

 been the crimes of Green, there is very good 

 reason to suppose that the murder of Drummond 

 was not one of them ; but the connexion of the 

 latter with the massacre of Glencoe, if true, is not 

 so well known a fact. In Gallienus Redivivus, or 

 Murther will out, being a true Account of. that Affair 

 (of Glencoe), in a Letter from a Gent, in Scotland 

 to his Friend in England, Edinburgh, 1695, that 

 name certainly does figure as one of the most bar- 

 barous of the actors in this atrocity : 



" One of the proscribed Macdonalds, a child," says the 

 writer, "suing for mercy, would have found it from 

 Captain Campbell ; but I am informed one Drummond, an 

 officer, barbarously run his dagger through him, whereof 

 he died immediately." 



Is it possible that this miscreant was the man who 

 subsequently figured so prominently as a com- 

 mander in the service of the Scots Company, and 

 one of their council at New Caledonia ? In both 

 Mr. Burton's Darien Papers, and in the Journal 

 of Drury, Drummond is presented to us more, I 

 think, in the light of a military than a naval man ; 

 and if the Glencoe murderer, the Darien coun- 

 cillor, and the Madagascar captive, are identical, 

 the poet was premature in excepting him from 

 God's judgment, for we are told by Drury that 

 " he was killed at Tillea, in Madagascar, by a Ja- 

 maica negro." J. O. 



Dr. John nine's Collections. — Can any one in- 

 form me what became of the collection of Baby- 

 lonian Antiquities, which formerly belonged to 

 Dr. John Hine, of Baghdad? It seems to have 

 been of considerable value. E. H. D. D. 



Quotations of Plato and Aristotle. — 



"Albumazar says that the man who knows how to 

 count can be ignorant of nothing ; and Plato, with Ari- 

 stotle, says that man is the wisest of animals, because he 

 has the science of numbers." — Xouet's Life of Christ in 

 Glory, translation by Dr. Pusey, p. 439. 



No reference is given to the works of Plato or of 

 Aristotle. Can you or your readers supply the 

 deficiency ? H. P. 



Lincoln's Inn. 



Who struck George IV. f — Which of George IV.'s- 

 companions struck him when prince regent, for 

 making use of an insulting expression after dinner ? 

 I have heard that the prince was with difficulty 

 dissuaded from taking legal proceedings against 

 his assailant as for high treason. Nemo. 



Lincoln's Inn, 



The American Bittern. — Refreshing myself the 

 other day by turning over some old numbers of 

 that delightful work, the Magazine of Natural 

 History, I stumbled on the following statement as 

 to an alleged luminosity of the American bittern : 



" It is called by Wilson the Great American Bittern ; 

 but, what is very extraordinary, he omits to mention that 

 it has the power of emitting a light from its breast, equal 

 to the light of a common torch, which illuminates the 

 water so as to enable it to discover its prey. As this cir- 

 cumstance is not mentioned by any of the naturalists that 

 I have ever read, I took some trouble to ascertain the 

 truth, which has been confirmed to me by several gentle- 

 men of undoubted veracity, and especially by Mr. Frank- 

 lin Peale, the proprietor of the Philadelphia Museum." — 

 Vol. ii. p. 64. 



Is this a Jonathan, or something better ? If 

 not a zoological fact, there may, perhaps, be some 

 matters of traditional interest, perhaps an Indian 

 superstition, mixed up with the statement, the 

 particulars of which, if obtained in reply, may 

 compensate for the space this Query occupies. 



Shirley Hibbehp. 



Mr. Jehyll and the " Tears of the Cruets." — 

 Mr. Jekytl the barrister, who sat for Calne in 

 several successive parliaments, was justly distin- 

 guished as one of the most eminent wits of the 

 age. At the time Mr. Pitt was meditating a tax 

 upon salt, he produced a short and much-admired 

 poem, entitled the Tears of the Cruets, in which 

 the latter, apprehending that their contents, oil 

 and vinegar, may be subjected to his remorseless 

 taxation, feelingly lament their situation, and very 

 pathetically allude to the probable ruin of the two 

 great oilmen and Italian warehousemen of that 

 day, in two lines which I recollect : 



"Poor Barto Valle! melancholy Burgess! 

 Victims of Pitt, of Huskisson *, and Sturges."t 



* William Huskisson, Esq.. M.P. for Morpeth, Under- 

 Secretary of State, War Department. 

 •}• M.P. for Hastings and a Lord of the Treasury. 



