2'«i S. V. 122., May 1. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



367 



— who say the thing that is not. That he reached 

 the age of 110 years, is all but incredible; but 

 that about that time he cut new teeth, and re- 

 gained his hair ! . . . . With respect to the ques- 

 tion — the main point of G. N.'s Query — Whether 

 sight ones lost can spontaneously return in old 

 age? — I may observe, that the wonderful stories 

 of this kind which one hears and reads of, when 

 true, can be accounted for in the following way : — 

 If the blindness — partial blindness rather — be 

 the result of cataract, it may happen that after 

 the crystalline lenses have for many years been 

 opaque, one of them may suddenly fall down, so 

 as to leave the pupil wholly or partially unob- 

 structed; and when this occurs, sight may be in- 

 stantaneously restored to the affected eye. Such 

 cases are a godsend to quacks ; because the re- 

 storation of sight, which is due to an accident 

 quite beyond their control, is of course attributed 

 by them and by their dupes to the efficacy of 

 some wonder-working lotion or drop, which may 

 have been in use at the time. People in general 

 are so ignorant of the physiology and diseases of 

 the eye, that all non-medical accounts relating to 

 such subjects, even if proceeding from the patients 

 themselves, are utterly worthless. Jaydee. 



I can supply your correspondent, G. N., with 

 one example of second-sight which has recently 

 come under my own observation. 



About three weeks ago I was at a bookseller's, 

 selecting a volume or two, and laid one of very 

 small print, entitled The Biographical Portrait 

 Gallery, on the table. An old lady who was in 

 the shop, a neighbour of the bookseller's, took it 

 up and read a portion of it. It was remarked 

 what good eyesiglit she must have to be able to 

 read it. She replied she could thread the smallest 

 needle ; and farther added, that she recovered her 

 eyesight after a severe fit of illness, before which 

 she had worn "glasses" for thirty years. She 

 informed me she was seventy-eight years of age. 



M. E. Berry. 



MedicBval Seals (2"'' S. v. 274.) — Mr. Brad- 

 I.EY may obtain casts of many mediaeval seals of 

 Doubleday, Little Russell Street, Bloomsbury ; 

 but the best are sold by a perambulating dealer, 

 named Ready, who is generally on a tour after 

 fresh seals. I think an application addressed, 

 under cover, to J. G. Bayfield, Esq., Magdalen 

 Street, Norwich, would probably find him. 



RusTicus Mus. 



Ledbury Monument (2"'' S. iv. 492.) — I have 

 waited with some interest for an answer to the 

 question relative to this monument, signed M. E. 

 Miles. I am not much acquainted with heraldry, 

 but I think it will be found that the arms are not 

 of the royal family of England, although they may 

 be of some of the Welch princes. Another con- 

 jecture has been that it is the tomb of Catherine 



d'Audley, relative to whom a well-known legend 

 exists in the locality. She was the grand-daughter 

 of Sir John Giffard of Brimsfield, whose arms 

 were three lions passant. He married Maud, the 

 widow of William de Longespee, the grand- 

 daughter of Walter de Clifford, sheriff of Here- 

 fordshire temp. Henry II., and the brother of Fair 

 Rosamond. Katherine Audley was a recluse at 

 Ledbury. Another conjecture has been that it is 

 the monument of a prioress of Aconbury, a mo- 

 nastery in the county, about fifteen miles from 

 Ledbury, though I cannot ascertain upon what 

 foundation. I believe, however, it was not un- 

 usual on the suppression of the monasteries to re- 

 move valuable monuments to neighbouring parish 

 churches ; and some slight confirmation is afforded 

 of this fact by the circumstance that a Joan de 

 Ledbury was prioress of Aconbury in 1 Hen. IV. 

 (see Duncombe's History of Herefordshire). 



George MASEriELu. 

 Ledbury. 



Coward (2°* S. v. 314.) — I should think this 

 word was in use before the Portuguese language 

 was known, and is probably derived from cowherd, 

 a term of contempt applied by the Normans to the 

 Saxon peasantry. We retain shepherd, but not 

 sivineherd or cowherd. H. T. 



iWtrfcrtlanenuiS. 



NOTES ON BOOKS AND BOOK SALES. 



We do not know how we can better direct the atten- 

 tion of our archaeological friends to the value of the 

 recently published volume by tlie Archdeacon of Cardigan, 

 entitled Essays on various Subjects, Philological, Philo- 

 sophical, Ethnological, and Archaeological, connected with the 

 Prehistorical Records of the Civilised Nations of Ancient 

 Europe, especially of that Race which first occupied Great 

 Britain, than by the following enumeration of the various 

 subjects which are discussed in it, with no small amount 

 of learning and ingenuit}'. They are as follows : — On 

 Cam Goch, in Caermarthenshire; On the Early Inter- 

 course between the Eastern and Western World, and on 

 Celtic Coins ; On One Source of the Non-Hellenic Portion 

 of the Latin Language ; The Virgilian Cosmogony' ; On 

 the Aristotelian Expression "META TA *Y2IKA"; A Se- 

 lection from certain Archaeological Papers written by the 

 Archdeacon of Cardigan ; Extract from an unpublished 

 Archaeological Paper; On the Megalithic Structures in 

 Auvergne; Primitive Tradition, a Letter to the Edin- 

 burgh Eeview ; The Antiquity of Celtic Coins ; A Few 

 Observations on certain very Ancient Traditions among 

 certain Primitive Nations; The Ancient Pbcenicians and 

 their Language ; The Written Records of the Cuniri ; On 

 the Difference between the Cumraeg and the Gaeleg ; On 

 the Great Ethnological Theory; On the Antiquity of 

 certain Welsh Manuscripts. 



The Quarterly Review, which has just been issued, opens 

 with a clever article on Boswell's Johnson, in which the 

 writer does that justice to Boswell, which Boswell never 

 did to himself. The other lighter articles are " Fictions 

 of Bohemia," and "Italian Tours and Tourists." We 

 have an Art biography, in the paper on " Michael An- 



