618 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 161. 



been directed to the poisonous qualities of the 

 toad, the following may not be without interest ; I 

 have extracted it from Thomas Lupton's A Thou- 

 sand Notable Things of Sundarie Sorts, 1630, 

 book i. art. 1. : 



" In the first beginning hereof, a rare and strange 

 matter shall appeare, worthy to be marked, especially 

 of such as loue or use Sage. A certaine man being in 

 a Garden with his Loue, did take (as he was walking) 

 a few leaues of Sage, who rubbing his teeth and gummes 

 therewith, immediately fell downe and died ; where- 

 upon his said Loue was examined how he died. She 

 said she knew nothing that he ailed, but that he rubbed 

 his teeth with sage ; and she went with the Judge and 

 others into the Garden and place, where the same 

 thing happened : and then she tooke of the same Sage 

 to show them how hee did, and likewise rubbed her 

 teeth and gummes therewith, and presently she died 

 also, to the great maruell of all them that stood by ; 

 whereupon the Judge suspecting the cause of their 

 deaths to be in the Sage, caused the said bed of Sage to 

 bee plucked and digged up, and to bee burned, lest 

 others might have the like harme thereby. And at 

 the rootes, or under the said Sage, there was a great 

 Toad found, which infjcted the same Sage with his 

 Tenomous breath. Anthonius Mizaldus hath written 

 of this marvellous matter. This may be a warning to 

 such as rashly use to eat raw and vnwasht Sage ; 

 therefore it is good to plant Rue round about Sage, for 

 Toads by no meanes will come nigh vnto Rue (as it is 

 thought of some)." 



Has the toad an antipathy to rue ? 



Edward Peacock, Jun. 

 Bottesford Moors. 



Passage in '■'■ Religio Medici'' (Vol. vi., p. 415.). 

 — Mr. Allen will find in chap. vi. of Mrs. Crowe's 

 very interesting book, The Night Side of Nature, 

 under the title of "The Palingenesia," a con- 

 siderable amount of information on the resuscita- 

 tion of the forms of plants from their ashes. The 

 following sentence I will copy out for him : 



" Kircher, Vallemont, Digby, and others, are said to 

 have practised this art of resuscitating the forms of plants 

 from their ashes ; and at the meeting of naturalists at 

 Stuttgart, in 1834, a Swiss savant seems to have revived 

 the subject, and given the receipt for the. experiment 

 extracted from a work by (Etinger, called Thoughts on 

 the Birth and Generation of Things. ' The earthly husk,' 

 say CEtinger, ' remains in the retort, while the volatile 

 essence ascends like a spirit, perfect in form, but void 

 of substance.' " 



An Oxford B.C.L. 



Monument at Wadstena (Vol.vi., p. 388.). — With 

 reference to Mr. Gole's inquiry respecting the 

 monument in the monastery at " ilfo(^stenu" in 

 Sweden to the memory of Phillipa, daughter of 

 Henry IV. of England, and wife of Eric P. King 

 of Sweden, I beg to suggest whether the monas- 

 tery at " WadstQr\?i" be not the place in question. 

 For, in that beautiful collection of prints in three 



volumes folio, entitled Suecia Antigua et Hodierna, 

 published about 1703, ilfodstena is not mentioned 

 or alluded to. But in the third volume there is a 

 large print of the castle and town of Wadstena, ; 

 immediately following which is a print of the 

 monument of our Saviour on the cross, as de- 

 scribed by Mr. Gole. The second print repre- 

 sents the slab, with the supporters of the arms of 

 England — the lion and the unicorn. The royal 

 arms, "France and England quarterly," with a 

 helmet, crest, and lambrequin, are on the right- 

 hand corner at the bottom of the slab. 

 The inscription on the print is — 



" Tumulus Serenissimse Reginae Philippse Regis 

 Erici coniugis in Templo Wastenente. " 



It appears to me that this memorial is an incised 

 slab. J. B. 



Derivation of ^^ Pic-nic" (Vol. iv., p. 152.). — 

 Although I am unable to answer the Query of 

 A. F. S. as to the derivation of the word, yet I 

 can refer him to the following extract, which I 

 accidentally met with in seeking the information 

 he wanted. It will be interesting as showing the 

 year in which these pic-nic parties first came into 

 fashion in England : 



"Pic-nic Supper. — This season (1802) says the 

 Annual Register, has been marked by a new species of 

 entertainment, common to the fashionable world, called 

 a Pic-nic supper. It consists of a variety of dishes. 

 The subscribers to the entertainment have a bill of 

 fare presented to them, with a number against each 

 dish. The lot which he draws obliges him to furnish 

 the dish marked against it ; which he either takes with 

 him in a carriage, or sends by a servant. The proper 

 variety is preserved by the taste of the maitre-d'hotel 

 who forms the bill of fare." 



Query : How was the wine furnished at these 

 pic-nic suppers ? W. W. 



La Valetta, Malta, 



Dr. P. Browne s MSS., Sfc. (Vol. iv., p. 175.).— 

 When I forwarded a Query as to the MS. Flora 

 of the counties of Mayo and Galway, which Dr. 

 Browne had prepared for the press under the 

 title of Fascicidus Plantamm Hihernicarum, I was 

 under the impression that the MS. was possibly in 

 the library of Trinity College, Dublin ; but I have 

 since heard that it, along with some other MS. 

 remains of his, are in the library of the Linnean 

 Society. Perhaps, by giving this clue, some in- 

 formation respecting these MSS. might be fur- 

 nished me by some of your readers who may be 

 Fellows of the Society. I am not aware if they 

 have been published ; but if they have, a note on 

 this would also oblige. 



The recent Queries and Notes of Eirionnach 

 and Seleucus induce me also to call their atten- 

 tion to the latter part of the Query which I have 

 referred to above (Vol. iv., p. 175.), as probably 



