590 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 190. 



In an extract from the churchwardens' accounts 

 of the parish of St. Helen, in Abingdon, Berks, we 

 find the following entry : 



" Anno MDxci. 34 Eliz. ' Payde for an houre-glasse 

 for the pulpit,' 4rf." — See Hone's Table-Book, vol. i. 

 p. 482. 



Among the accounts of Christ Church, St. Ca- 

 therine's, Aldgate, under the year 1564, this entry 

 occurs : 



" Paid for an hour-glass that hangeth by the pulpitt 

 ■when the preacher doth make a sermon that he may 

 know how the hour passeth away." — Malcolm's Lon- 

 dinium, vol. iii. p. 309., cited Southey's Common- Place 

 Book, 4th Series, p. 471. 



InFosbrooke (5r. Mon., p. 286.) I find the fol- 

 lowing passage : 



" A stand for an hour-glass still remains in many 

 pulpits. A rector of Bibury (in Gloucestershire) used 

 to preach two hours, regularly turning the glass. After 

 the text the esquire of the parish withdrew, smoaked 

 his pipe, and returned to the blessing." 



The authority for this, which Fosbrooke cites, is 

 Rudder's Gloucestershire, in " Bibury." It is 

 added that lecturers' pulpits have also hour- 

 glasses. The woodcuts in Hawkins's Music, ii. 

 332., are referred to in support of this statement. 

 I regret that I have no means of consulting the 

 two last-mentioned authorities. 



In 1681 some poor crazy people at Edinburgh 

 called themselves the Sweet Singers of Israel. 

 Among other things, they renounced the limiting 

 the Lord's mind by glasses. This is no doubt in 

 allusion to the hour-glass, which Mr. Water, the 

 editor of the fourth series of Southey's Common- 

 Place Booh, informs us is still to be found, or at 

 least its iron frame, in many churches, adding that 

 the custom of preaching by the hour-glass com- 

 menced about the end of the sixteenth century. 

 I cannot help thinking that an earlier date must 

 be assigned to this singular practice. (See Southey's 

 Common-Place Booh, 4th series, p. 379.) Mr. 

 Water states that one of these iron frames still 

 exists at Ferring in Sussex. The iron extin- 

 guishers still to be found on the railing opposite 

 large houses in London, are a similar memorial of 

 an obsolete custom. 



I trust some contributor to the " N. & Q." will 

 be able to supply farther illustrations of this 

 custom. Should it be revived in our own times, 

 I fear most parishes would supply only a half-honr 

 glass for the pulpit of their church, however una- 

 nimous antiquity may be in favour of sermons of 

 an hour's duration. One advantage presented by 

 this ancient and precise practice was, that the 

 squire of the parish knew exactly when it was 

 time to put out his pipe and return for the blessing, 

 which he cannot ascertain under the present un- 

 certain and indefinite mode of preaching. Fos- 

 brooke (Br. Mon., p. 286.) states that the priest 



had sometimes a watch found for him by the 

 parish. The authority cited for this is the fol- 

 lowing entry in the accounts of the Chantrey 

 Wardens of the parish of Shire in Surrey : 



" Received for the priest's watch after he was dead, 

 13s. 4d." — Manning's Surrey, vol. i. p. 531. 



This entry seems to be rather too vague and ob- 

 scure to warrant the inference drawn from it. 

 This also may be susceptible of farther illus- 

 tration. A. W. S. 

 Temple. 



THE MEGATHERIUM AMERICANUM IN THE BRITISH 

 MUSEUM. 



Amongst the most interesting specimens of 

 that collection certainly ranges the skeleton of 

 the above animal of a primaeval world, albeit 

 but a cast ; the real bones, found in Buenos 

 Ayres, being preserved in the Museum of Madrid. 

 To imagine a sloth of the size of a large bear, 

 somewhat bafiles our imagination ; especially if we 

 ponder upon the size of trees on which such a 

 huge animal must have lived. To have placed 

 near him a nondescript branch ( ! !) of a palm, as 

 has been done in the Museum here, is a terrible 

 mistake. Palms there were none at that period 

 of telluric formation ; besides, no sloth ever could 

 ascend an exogenous tree, as the simple form of 

 the coma of leaves precludes every hope of mo- 

 tion, &c. I never can view those remnants of a 

 former world, without being forcibly reminded of 

 that most curious passage in Berosus, which I cite 

 from memory : 



" There was a flood raging then over parts of the 

 world . . . There were to be seen, however, on the 

 walls of the temple of Belus, representations of animals, 

 such as inhabited the earth before the Flood." 



We may thence gather, that although the an- 

 cient world did not possess museums of stuffed 

 animals, yet, the first collection of Icones is cer- 

 tainly that mentioned by Berosus. I think that 

 it was about the times of the Crusades, that ani- 

 mals were first rudely preserved (stuffed), whence 

 the emblems in the coats of arms of the nobility 

 also took their origin. I have seen a MS. in the 

 British Museum dating from this period, where 

 the delineation of a bird of the Picus tribe is to 

 be found. Many things which the Crusaders saw 

 in Egypt and Syria were so striking and new to 

 them, that they thought of means of preserving 

 them as mementoes for themselves and friends. 

 The above date, I think, will be an addition to the 

 history of collections of natural history : a work 

 wanting yet in the vast domain of modern litera- 

 ture. A Foreign Surgeon. 



Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury Square. 



