Jan. 8. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



51 



nouncing the appointment of several clergymen as 

 deputy-lieutenants. This is an office which is so 

 far of a military character, that it is supposed to 

 place the holder in the rank of lieutenant- colonel, 

 and certainly entitles him to wear a military 

 uniform. If these members of the " church mi- 

 litant" should be presented at Her Majesty's 

 Court in their new appointment, will they appear 

 in their clerical or military habit ? n. *. 



Passage in Burke (Vol. vl., p. 556.). — The 

 reply to Quando Tandem's Query is given, I 

 imagine, by Burke himself, in a passage which 

 occurs only a few lines after that which has been 

 quoted : 



" Little did I dream that she should ever be obliged 

 to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed 

 in that bosom." 



This means, I suppose, that Mai-ie Antoinette 

 carried a dagger, with which, more Romano, she 

 would have committed suicide, had her brutal 

 persecutors assaulted her. Axfred Gatty. 



Ensake and Cradock Arms (Vol. vi., p. 533.). — 

 In a pedigree of the family of Barnwell, of Crans- 

 ley in Northamptonshire, now before me, I find 

 emblazoned the arms of Ensake : Paly of six azure 

 and or, on a bend sable three mullets pierced. 

 Cradock : Argent, three boars' heads couped sable 

 armed or. G. A. C. 



Sick House (Vol. vi., pp. 363. 568.). — ^SzAe or 

 syJte, a word in common use in the south of Scot- 

 land, and on the Border, meaning a small water 

 run. In Jamieson's Dictionary it is spelt " Sike, 

 syik, syk, a rill or rivulet ; one that is usually dry 

 in summer ; a small stream or rill ; a marshy bottom 

 with a small stream in it." J. S.s. 



Americanisms so called (Vol. vi., p. 554.). — The 

 word bottom, signifying a piece of low ground, 

 whether upon a stream of water or not, is English. 

 I recollect two places at this moment (both dry), 

 in the county of Surrey, to which the word is ap- 

 plied, viz. Smitham Bottom, to the north of Rei- 

 gate, through which the railway runs ; and Boxhill 

 Bottom, a few miles to the westward, in the same 

 range of chalk hills. 



Sparse and sparsely, it is said by Uneda of 

 Philadelphia, are Americanisms. This, however, 

 is not so. There is a Query on the word sparse 

 in Vol. i., p. 215. by C. Forbes : and on p. 251. of 

 the same volume J. T. Stanley supposes It to be 

 an Americanism, on the authority of the Penny 

 Cyclopcedia. 



I have a strong conviction that I then wrote to 

 " N. & Q." to claim the word sparse as aboriginal 

 to the British Isles, for I find memoranda I had 

 made at the time on the margin of my Jamieson's 

 Dictionary on the subject ; but I do not find that 

 what I then wrote had been printed in " N. & Q." 



In the Supplement to Jamieson's Dictionary is 

 the following : " Spars, Sparse, adj. widely spread ; 

 as, 'sparse writing' is wide open writing, occupy- 

 ing a large space." The word is in common use 

 throughout the south of Scotland. 



I have come to be of opinion that there are few, 

 if any, words that are real Americanisms, but that 

 (except where the substance or the subject is quite 

 modern) almost every word and expression now in 

 use among the Anglo-Americans may be traced to 

 some one of the old provincial dialects of the 

 British Isles. J. S.s. 



The Folger Family (Vol. vi., p. 583.).— I do not 

 know whether there are any of that name in Wales, 

 but there was a family of that name near Tregony 

 in Cornwall some years ago, and may be now. I 

 am not quite certain whether they spell it Folger 

 or Fulger, but rather think the latter was the 

 mode of spelling it. S. Jennings- G. 



Wake Family (Vol.vi., p. 290.). — The Rev. 

 Robert Wake was vicar of Ogbourne, St. Andrew, 

 Wilts, from 1703 to 1715, N.S.,'during which time 

 he had these children :— Thomas, born the 17th of 

 July, 1706, and baptized on the 28th of the same 

 month; Elizabeth and Anne, both baptized on 

 the 16th of July, 1711. Arthur R. Carter. 



Camden Town. 



Shakspeare's " Twelfth Night " (Vol.vi., p. 584.). 

 — Agreeing with Mr. Singer in his doubts re- 

 garding the propriety of changing the word case 

 into face, in the line, — 



" When time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy case" — 

 I would instance a passage in Measure for 

 Measure, where Angelo says — 



« O place ! O form ! 

 How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, 

 Wrench awe from fools," &c. 



w. c. 



Electrical Phenomena (Vol. vi., p. 555.^. — The 

 case recorded by Adsum is not at all an infrequent 

 one, and the phenomena alluded to have been no- 

 ticed for a very long period, and are of very com- 

 mon occurrence in dry states of the atmosphere. 

 The following, from Daniel's Introduction to Che- 

 mical Philosophy (a most useful work for general 

 readers), will probably explain all that Adsum is 

 desirous of knowing : 



" It was first observed by Otto de Guericke and 

 Hawsbee, that the friction of glass and resinous sub- 

 stances not only produced the phenomena which we 

 have just described (those of vitreous and resinous 

 electricity), but, under favourable circumstances, was 

 accompanied by a rustling or crackling noise ; and, 

 when the experiment was made in a dark room, by 

 flashes and sparks of light upon their surfaces. When 

 once the attention has been directed to the observation. 



