242 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 256. 



that before Holland became a swamp it was a very 

 woody country, and that Druidism was the religion 

 of the inhabitants. The early history of the 

 United Provinces is involved in greater obscurity 

 than that of any other part of civilised Europe. 



TiMON. 



Monumental Inscription. — T transcribe the fol- 

 lowing from a fly-leaf of Bishop Wilkins' Of the 

 Principles and Duties of Natural Religion, 1704: 



"A gentleman who dy'd desired a dial to be erected 

 above his grave, under which are to be ye following 

 verses : 



' No Marble pomp, no Monnmental Praise, 

 My Tomb this Dial ; epitaph these lays. 

 Pride and low mould'ring clay but ill agree. 

 Death levels me to beggars ; kings to me. 

 Alive, instruction was my work each day ; 

 Dead, 1 persist instruction to convey. 

 Here Reader mark (perhaps now in thy prime) 

 The stealing steps of never ending time : 

 Thou'lt be what I am ; catch the present hour, 

 Employ that well, for that's within thy power.' " 



In the same hand, which seems cotemporary with 

 the publication of the book, is the name of the 

 owner, perhaps the author of the verse : " Tho. 

 Ellis JE. coU Jesus C." Edward Pbacock. 



Whimsical Petition to James L — 



" The Lords craved all. 

 The Queene graunted all, ' 



The Ladyes of honour ruled all. 

 The Lord Keeper seal'd all. 

 The Intelligencer mar'd all. 

 The Parliament pass'd all. 

 He that is gone opposed himselfe to all. 

 The Bishops soothed all. 

 The Judges pardon'd all. 

 The Lord Buy Rome spoyi'd all. 

 Kow good King mend all. 

 Or els the Devil will have all." 



Ashm, MS. No. 1730. 



Z. z. 



Swift and Leap-year. — The following occurs 

 in the Journal to Stella, March 1, 1710-11 : 



"Morning. I have been calling to Patrick to look in his 

 almanac for the day of tho month ; I did not know but it 

 might be leap-year. The almanac says it is the third 

 after leap-year, and I always thought till now that every 

 third year was leap-year. 1 am glad they come so seldom ; 

 but I am sure it was otherwise when I was a young man : 

 I see times are mightily changed since then." 



Swift did not pick up much ordinary school 

 learning while he was young ; but the above is 

 almost beyond comprehension. That he had a 

 good head for figures, and for expressing propor- 

 tions in numbers, any one who has been with him 

 to Lilliput and Brobdignag will not fail to see. 

 Possibly he might have picked up his notion in 

 this way. Say that in 1679-80 he happened to 

 see the almanac (which counted 1680 from Janu- 

 ary 1, as did all the almanacs), from which he 

 ■would learn that 1680 is leap-year. Suppose that 



in 1683-84 he happened to note February 29, 

 from the common parlance of those about him, 

 as falling in 1683, and to remember that the last 

 leap-year was in 1680. With such a departure 

 he might live in the belief that leap-year comes 

 every three years. M. 



" To get upon one's high horse." — In the Me- 

 moires de la Baronne IX Oberhirche, published 

 last year at Paris, by her grandson the Count de 

 Montbrison, is a passage (vol. i. p. 172.) respecting 

 the corresponding French phrase " Monter sur sea 

 grands chevaux," which may be thus rendered : 



" Lorraine has many noble families, bearing particular 

 titles, in use only in this dlichy. The four principaJ 

 families are called the Large Horses, which are — D'Harau- 

 court, Lenoncourt, Ligneville, and Du Chatelet. 



" The second class of chivalry, families which descend 

 from these through females, and which may intermarry 

 with them upon an equal footing, are — Stainville, Ludre, 

 SaftVe d'Haussonville, Labertie, Gournay, Fiquelmont 

 d'Ourches, Helmstadt, Marie, Mauleon, Mercy, &c." 



It is often said that these horses are quite equal 

 to the first four, and that these little horses are 

 sometimes worth more than the large horses, whose 

 pretensions are questionable. Thence the expres- 

 sion to get upon one^s high horse. Uneda. 

 Philadelphia. 



^MtViti. 



DID THE GREEK PHTSICIANS EXTRACT TEETH? 



Having, of late, devoted a few leisure hours to 

 the several subjects connected with the history of 

 dentistry, the question struck me as curious — 

 "whether the oldest Greek surgeons extracted 

 teeth, and where the first notice thereof is to be 

 found ? " That the Egyptians paid much atten- 

 tion to dentistry, I learnt from the following 

 passage of Herodotus : 



" The art of medicine is thus divided amongst them 

 (the Egyptians) : each physician applies himself to one 

 disease only, and no more. All places abound in physi- 

 cians ; some phj'sicians are for the eyes, others for the 

 head, others for the teeth, and others for internaldisorders." 

 —Herod, ii. 84. 



But as the surgical instruments could not have 

 been made but of steel or iron, none of these 

 apparatus has reached us, although the number of 

 various other utensils, which have been preserved,^ 

 is very great. 



The next which attracted attention were the 

 many passages of Hippocrates (Epidem.), where 

 he speaks of maladies of the teeth, of which the 

 following are a sample : 



" With a child suffering from phagedenic affection, the 

 teeth fell out, as the bone (jaw) had become hollow. The 

 wife of Aspasias had violent toothache ; the jaw swelled ; 

 having used a coUutorium of castorium and pepper, she 

 was relieved." — Epid. v. 67. "Melesander, the gums 



