110 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 196. 



placed on one line, wlien it would be horizontal. 

 In such treatment the departure from both is as 

 great as in the first example, and the outrage 

 greater, inasmuch as, under these circumstances 

 (I mean a boy with a box), to any person of 

 common sense, the caricature would be at a glance 

 obvious. This rule, then, although it produces 

 stereosity enough, being false, should also be re- 

 jected. 



I believe that 2|- inches will be found to be 

 right under any circumstance ; but should suffi- 

 cient reasons be offered for a better rule, I trust I 

 am open to conviction, and shall hail with great 

 pleasure a demonstration of its correctness. 



Should it, however, turn out that I have given 

 a right definition, and a correct solution of this 

 most interesting problem, I shall rejoice to know 

 that I have rendered an essential service to a 

 great number of anxious students in photography. 



T. L. Meeritt. 



Maidstone. 



Yellow Bottles for Photographic Chemicals. — 

 The proposal of your correspondent Ceridwen to 

 employ yellow glass bottles for preventing the de- 

 composition of photographic solutions has been 

 anticipated. It was suggested by me, in some 

 lectures on Photography in November 1847, and 

 in January of the present year, that yellow bottles 

 might be so used, as well as for preventing the 

 decomposition, by light, of the vegetable sub- 

 stances used in pharmacy, such as digitalis, ipe- 

 cacuanha, cinchona, &c. For solutions of silver, 

 however, the most effectual remedy against pre- 

 cipitation is the use of very pure water, procured 

 by slow redistillation in glass vessels at a tempe- 

 ratm'e much below the boiling point. 



Hugh Owen. 



Earth upon Earth, ^c. — I think the Information 

 which has been elicited In connexion with the so- 

 called " Unpublished Epigram by Sir W. Scott," 

 " N. & Q.," Vol. vli., p. 498., sufficiently curious 

 to justify an additional reference to the senti- 

 ment In question ; the more so as I have to men- 

 tion the name of its putative author. In Mont- 

 gomery's Christian Poet, 3rd edit. p. 58., he gives, 

 under the title of " Earth upon Earth," five verses, 

 which it would appear are substantially the same 

 as those published by Weaver (whose Funeral 

 Monuments, his only publication, I have not within 

 reach), but they exhibit considerable verbal dif- 

 ference in the verses corresponding with those 

 cited In " N. & Q.," Vol. vli., p. 576. Montgo- 

 mery tells us in a note that this extract, given 

 under the name of William Billyng, along with 

 another from a poem entitled " The Five Wounds 



of Christ," by the same author, were from " a 

 manuscript on parchment of great antiquity, in 

 possession of William Bateman, Esq.," of which 

 a few copies had been printed at Manchester, and 

 " accompanied by rude but exceedingly curious 

 cuts." Now who was William Billyng ? And 

 when did he live ? Montgomery says " the age 

 of this author Is well known." The death of the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom Weaver 

 {Fun. Mon. 1G31) applies the Stratford epigraph, 

 is temp. Edward III. Is Mr. Bateman's MS. in a 

 hand indicating so early a date ? J. H. 



Picalyly (Vol. vlii., p. 8.). — In Barnaby Rich's 

 Honestie of this Age, p. 37. of the Percy Society 

 reprint, we find this passage : 



" But he that some fortie or fifty yeares sithens 

 should liaue asked after a Pickadilly, I wonder who 

 could haue understood him, or could haue told what a 

 Pickadilly had beene, either fish or flesh." 



Little did the writer think that in future years 

 the name would become a "household word;" 

 though his prophecy as to the meaning of the 

 word has been fulfilled by the appearance of the 

 Query in the pages of " N. & Q." 



The editor of tlie work, Mr. Peter Cunningham, 

 has a long note on the above passage ; and I am 

 Indebted to him for the following. 



" Ben Jonson { Worlis by GiflTord, viii. 370.) speaks 

 o{a picardill as a new cut of band much in fashion : 

 • Ready to cast at one whose band stands stllJ, 

 And then leap mad on a neat picardill.' 



"But Middleton, The World tost at Tennis, 1620, 

 speaks of a pickadill in connexion with the shears, the 

 needle, &c. of the tailor ; from which it appears to have 

 been an instrument used for plaiting the picked vaa- 

 dyke collar worn in those days. 



" Mr. GifFord, in a note on another passage in Ben 

 Jonson, says ; 



' Ficardil is simply a diminutive o£ picca (Span, and 

 Ital.), a spear -head ; and was given to this article of 

 foppery from a fancied resemblance of its stiffened 

 plaits to the bristled points of these weapons. Blount 

 thinks, and apparently with justice, that Picadilly took 

 its name from the sale of the ' small stiff collars so 

 called,' which was first set on foot in a house near the 

 western [eastern] extremity of the present street by 

 one Higgins, a tailor.' " 



The bands worn by the clergy and judges, &c., 

 at the present day, are lineal descendants of the 

 old picadils, reduced to a more sober cut ; and the 

 picked ornament alluded to by your correspon- 

 dent no doubt derived Its name from Its resem- 

 blance in shape to these tokens of ancient fashion. 



H. C. K. 



■ Rectory, Hereford. 



Mr. Justice Newton (Vol. vll., pp. 528. 600.; 

 Vol. viii., p. 15.). — I did not answer Mr. F. 

 KyrriN Lenthall's first Query, because it was 



