Dec. 4. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



541 



" Oh ! if no tongue of holy grace 

 Sliould bid the lawless tempest cease, 

 Let suppliant Erin's voice be heard, 

 Though weak her tongue, yet wise her word, 

 The word of peace." 



I know no other passage, either of prose or verse, 

 in which weakness of tongue is imputed to Erin. 



H. B. C. 

 U. U. Club. 



THE SIN-EATEB. 



(Vol. vi., p. 390.) 



In addition to your reference to the scape-goat, 

 as accounting for the custom to which Jelinger 

 C. Symons refers, it occurs to me that Ilosea iv. 8. 

 might be also quoted : " They eat up the sin of my 

 people." " They eat up," that is, " the sin-ofFering 

 of my people." As the priest of old, by eating the 

 sin-offering, declared in the clearest way that the 

 sins of the guilty offerer had been transferred to the 

 victim that was offered, so in some sort it came to 

 be believed by superstitious persons, that the eat- 

 ing a piece of bread which had been taken off the 

 body of a dead man, and offered to another in his 

 behalf, transferred the sins of the deceased to the 

 eater of the bread. Perhaps indeed the practice 

 referred to may be rather traced up to the one 

 great sin-offering of Him who was " made sin" for 

 us, and who " took bread,'" the night He was be- 

 trayed at the institution of the Eucharist. " The 

 'bread" became the representative of the victim on 

 Calvary ; and from the sin-qffermg- eater, or " sin- 

 eater," being a regulai-ly ordained priest — who 

 might, for a consideration, say a mass for the dead, 

 ■ — laymen of "reprobate character" usurped his 

 priestly functions, and took that honour to them- 

 selves. Some notion at least of the /east upon a 

 sacrifice seems to be implied by the proceeding 

 referred to by your correspondent. 



Alexander Leeper. 



Dublin. 



In Whitby and Doddridge there is a note on 

 1 Cor. iv. 13. which gives some information on 

 this subject. Whitby, from Phavoiinus, states the 

 custom referred to to be an Athenian one ; but I 

 see, in Pole's Synopsis, that Grotius, in a note on 

 the above passage, refers to Csesar, lib. vi., in proof 

 that a custom of the same kind prevailed among 

 the Gauls. See also Bos, Exercit. Philohg., p. 125., 

 to whom Doddridofe refers. E. B. 



PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



Sandford's Waxed Paper. — In reply to your 

 correspondent W. F. W., I beg to state that I 

 have never operated with Sandford's Avaxed paper. 

 If it be Fx-ench paper, and simply waxed, I see no 

 reason why it should not succeed, if treated subse- 



quently by the method I have given ; but if it be 

 already iodized or e.xcited, not knowing the method 

 of its preparation, I can, of course, offer no opinion 

 upon the subject. 



The address of Mr. Slater is " 4. Somer's Place 

 West, Euston Square." William Crookes. 



Hammersmith. 



Photography and the Microscope. — We learn 

 from TVie Athenceum of Saturday last, that at a 

 meeting of the Microscopical Society, on the 24th 

 ultimo, a very interesting conversation took place 

 after the reading of a paper by Mr. Hodgson " On 

 the Reproduction and Delineation of Microscopic 

 Forms," in which that gentleman went into the 

 history of the attempts made to delineate micro- 

 scopic objects by means of the Daguerreotype and 

 Talbotype. He referred more especially to the 

 labours of Dorme, Claudet, Carpenter, and Kings- 

 ley. He stated his conviction that till we could 

 engrave from Daguerreotype plates, photography 

 would be of little service to the microscopist, and 

 recommended sketches from the camera lucida, 

 as much superior for the delineation of micro- 

 scopic objects. — Mr. Delarue stated that he could 

 not agree with the author as to his estimate of the 

 value of photography to the microscopist. So 

 highly did he think of it, that he had recommended 

 the council of the Society of Arts to present 

 Mr. Delves with a medal, for the series of repre- 

 sentations which he had exhibited at the last meet- 

 ing of the Microscopical Society. — Mr. Shadbolt 

 believed that photography would be of great ser- 

 vice in delineating microscopic objects, and ex- 

 hibited a very beautiful representation of the bee's 

 tongue, which he had succeeded in producing upon 

 a surface of collodion. — Mr. Bowerbank saw no 

 reason why we should not be able to print from 

 photographic negatives with as much ease as we 

 now print from a di-awing on steel or on stone. — 

 Mr. Hogg stated, that he should long since have 

 published such plates, but for Mr. Fox Talbot's 

 patent : as that gentleman had now presented his 

 patent to the public, such plates would not be long 

 in making their appearance. — Mr, Yarley pointed 

 out some optical difficulties in presenting thick 

 objects upon a flat surface by means of photo- 

 graphy, and recommended a greater focal length 

 for the object-glass, and a wider aperture. — Mr. 

 Jackson, the chairman, stated, that he believed all 

 the optical difficulties might be easily removed. — 

 A beautiful series of photographic representations, 

 by a French artist, was exhibited by Mr. Bailliere. 



Novel Application of Photography. — In the Critic 

 for November 15, 1852 (p. 599. col. 3.), is the fol- 

 lowing statement, illustrative of the importance of 

 photography, which may serve as a note of a new 

 application of its powers : 



" The Jieviie Geneve states that the Federal Council 

 has authorised the department of justice and police to 



