326 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 205. 



discoloured, It acts equally well, even when of a 

 dark brown colour ; but it may always be de- 

 prived of its colour, and rendered sufficiently pure 

 again, by filtering it through a little animal char- 

 coal. Hugh W. Diamond. 



JRcplteiS to Minav ISiuttitS. 



Ander soli s Royal Genealogies (Vol.viii., p. 198.). 

 — In reply to your correspondent G., I may be 

 permitted to remark that it is generally under- 

 stood that no " memoir or biographical account " 

 is extant of Dr. James Anderson ; but short 

 notices of him and his works will be found on re- 

 ference to the Gentlematis Magazine, vol. liii. 

 p. 41. ; Chalmers' General Biographical Diction- 

 ary, 1812 ; Chambers' Lives of Illustrious Scots- 

 men, 1833 ; Biographical Dictionary of the Society 

 of Useful Knowledge, 1843 ; and also in Rose's 

 New Biographical Dictionary, 1848. T. G. S. 



Edinburgh. 



Thomas Wright of Durham (Vol. viii., p. 218.). 

 — ^^It may interest Mr. De Mokgan to be referred 

 to a manuscript in the British Museum, marked 

 "Additional, 15,627.," which he will find to be one 

 of the original " note-books," if not the very note- 

 book itself, from which the notice of the life of 

 Thomas Wright was compiled for the Gentleman^s 

 Magazine. It is, in fact, an autobiography by 

 Wright, written in the form of a journal ; and 

 although containing entries as late as the year 

 1780, it ceases to be continuous with the year 

 1748, and has no entries at all between that year 

 and 1756. This break in the journal sufficiently 

 accounts for the deficiency in the biography given 

 by the Gentleman s Magazine. 



I may mention, also, that the Additional MS. 

 15,628. contains Wright's unpublished collections 

 relative to British, Roman, and Saxon antiquities 

 in England. E. A. Bond. 



Weather Predictions (Vol. vlil., p. 218. &c.). — 

 The following is a Worcestershire saying : 



" When Bredon Hill puts on his hat, 

 Ye men of the vale, beware of that." 



Similar to this is a saying I have heard in the 

 northern part of Northumberland : 



" When Cheevyut (i. e. the Cheviot Hills) ye sec put 

 on his cap. 

 Of rain ye'U have a wee bit drap." 



There is a saying very common In many parts of 

 Huntingdonshire, that when the woodpeckers are 

 much heard, rain is sure to follow. 



CUTHBERT BeDE, B. A. 



Bacon's Essays: Bullaces (Vol.viii., pp.167. 

 .223.). — "BuUace" (I never heard Bacon's plural 

 used) are known in Kent as small white tartish 



plums, which do not come to perfection without 

 the help of a frost, and so are eaten when their 

 fellows are no more found. They have only been 

 cultivated of late years, I believe, but how long 

 I cannot tell. G. William Sktring. 



Somerset House. 



" Bullaces " are a small white or yellow plum, 

 about the size of a cherry, like a very poor kind 

 of greengage, which, in ordinai-y seasons, when 

 I was a boy, were the common display of the fruit- 

 stalls at the corners of the streets, so common and 

 well known that I can only imagine Mr. Halli- 

 WELL to have misdescribed them by a slip of the 

 pen writing black for white. Frank. Howard. 



" Gennitings " are early apples {quasi June- 

 eatings, as " gilliflowers," said to be corrupted 

 from July flowers). For the derivation suggested 

 to me while I write, I cannot answer ; but for the 

 fact I can, having, while at school in Needham 

 Market, Suffolk, plucked and eaten many a 

 " striped genniting," while " codlins " were on a 

 tree close by. And many a time have I been 

 rallied as a Cockney for saying I had gathered 

 " enough " instead of " enow," which one of your 

 Suffolk correspondents has justly recorded as the 

 county expression applied to number as distin- 

 guished from quantity. Frank Howard. 



Nixon the Prophet (Vol. viii., p. 257.). — Mr. 

 T. Hughes mentions Nixon " to have lived and 

 prophesied in the reign of James I., at whose 

 court, we are farther told, he was, in conformity 

 with his own prediction, starved to death." I 

 have an old and ragged edition, entitled J'he Life 

 and Prophecies of the celebrated Robert Nixon, the 

 Cheshire Prophet. The " life " professes to be 

 prepared from materials collected in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Vale Royal, on a farm near which, 

 and rented by his father, Nixon was born — 



" on Whitsunday, and was christened by the name 

 of Robert in the year 1467, about the seventh year of 

 Edward IV." 



Among various matters It is mentioned, — 



" What rendered Nixon the most noticed was, that 

 the time when the battle of Bosworth Field was fought 

 between King Richard III. and King Henry VII., he 

 stopped his team on a sudden, and with his whip 

 pointing from one land to the other, cried ' Now Ri- 

 chard ! now Henry I ' several times, till at last he said, 

 ' Now Harry, get over that ditch and you gain the 

 day 1 ' " 



This the plough-holder related; It afterwards 

 proved to be true, and In consequence Robert was 

 required to attend Henry VII.'s court, where he 

 was "starved to death," owing to having been 

 locked In a room and forgotten. The Bosworth 

 Field prophecy, which has often been repeated, 



