376 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 234. 



show undoubted evidence, from the shells and 

 shingle embedded in their strata, of having at 

 some period been submerged ; and the caverns 

 ■which exist in them are very large, and bones of 

 hyenas and other animals are to be found in them. 

 They are, however, very difficult to find without 

 a guide, and there are very few persons in the 

 neighbourhood who seem to know anything about 

 them. They are very well worthy of a visit, and 

 the surrounding scenery is beautiful in the ex- 

 treme. I shall be happy to put any person in the 

 way of finding them, should a desire be expressed 

 in your pages. Investigator. 



Manchester. 



[This is Fynnon Vair, or " the Well of Our Lady," 

 situated in a richly-wooded dell near the river Elwy, 

 in the township of Wigvair. This well, which is in- 

 closed in a polygonal basin of hewn stone, beautifully 

 and elaborately sculptured, discharges about 100 gal- 

 lons per minute: the water is strongly impregnated with 

 lime, and was formerly much resorted to as a cold 

 bath. Adjoining the well are the ruins of an ancient 

 cruciform chapel, which, prior to the Reformation, was 

 a chapel of ease to St. Asaph, in the later style of 

 English architecture : the windows, which are of hand- 

 some design, are now nearly concealed by the ivy 

 which has overspread the building; and the ruin, 

 elegant in itself, derives additional interest from the 

 beauty of its situation. See Lewis's Wales, and Beau- 

 ties of England and Wales, vol. xvii. p. 550.] 



Wafers. — When and where were wafers in- 

 vented ? They were no new discovery when 

 Labat saw some at Genoa in 1706; but from a 

 passage in his Voyages aVEspagne et Italie, pub- 

 lished in 1731, it would appear that they were 

 even then unknown in France. A writer in the 

 Quarterly Review says : 



•* We have in our possession letters with the wafers 

 still adhering, which went from Lisbon to Rome 

 twenty years before that time ; and Stolberg observes 

 that there are wafers and wafer-seals in the museum at 

 Portici." 



Abhba. 



[Respecting the antiquity of wafers, Beckmann, in 

 his History of Inventions, vol. i. p. 146. (Bonn's edition), 

 has the following notice : " M. Spiess has made an ob- 

 servation which may lead to farther researches, that 

 the oldest seal with a red wafer he has ever yet found, 

 is on a letter written by D. Krapf at Spires, in the 

 year 1624, to the government of Bayreuth. M. Spiess 

 has found also that some years after, Forstenhausser, 

 the Brandenburg factor at Nuremberg, sent such 

 ■wafers to a bailiff at Osternohe. It appears, however, 

 that wafers were not used during the whole of the 

 seventeenth century in the chancery of Brandenburg, 

 but only by private persons, and by these even seldom, 

 because, as Speiss says, people were fonder of Spanish 

 wax. The first wafers with which the chancery of 

 Bayreuth began to make seals were, according to an 

 expense account of the year 1705, sent from Nurem- 



berg. The use of wax, however, was still continued, 

 and among the Plassenburg archives there is a rescript 

 of 1722, sealed with proper wax. The use of wax 

 must have been continued longer in the Duchy of 

 Weimar ; for in the Electa Juris Publici there is an 

 order of the year 1716, by which the introduction of 

 wafers in law matters is forbidden, and the use of wax 

 commanded. This order, however, was abolished by 

 Duke Ernest Augustus in 1742, and wafers again in- 

 troduced."] 



Asgill on Translation to Heaven. — The Irish 

 House of Commons, in 1703, expelled a Mr. As- 

 gill from his seat for his book asserting the possi- 

 bility of translation to the other world without 

 death. What is the title of his book ? and where 

 may I find a copy ? Abhba. 



[This work, published anonymously, is entitled, 

 " An Argument proving that, according to the Cove- 

 nant of Eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures, Man 

 may be translated from hence into that Eternal Life 

 without passing through Death, although the Humane 

 Nature of Christ Himself could not be thus translated 

 till He had passed through Death," a.d. 1700. No name 

 of bookseller or printer. It may be seen at the British 

 Museum or Bodleian. This work raised a consider- 

 able clamour, and Dr. Sacheverell mentioned it among 

 other blasphemous writings which induced him to 

 think the Church was in danger.] 



Ancient Custom at Coleshill. — I have some- 

 where seen it stated, that there is an ancient 

 custom at Coleshill, in Warwickshire, that if the 

 young men of the town can catch a hare, and 

 bring it to the parson of the parish before ten 

 o'clock on Easter Monday, he is bound to give 

 them a calf's head and a hundred eggs for their 

 breakfast, and a groat in money. Can you inform 

 me whether this be the fact ? And if so, what is 

 the origin of the custom ? Abhba. 



[The custom is noticed in Blount's Ancient Tenures, 

 by Beckwith, edit. 1684, p. 286. The origin of it 

 seems to be unknown.] 



&£ulfc3. 



THE SONGS OF DEGREES. 



(Vol. ix., p. 121.) 



Too much pains cannot be expended on the 

 elucidation of the internal structure of the Psalms. 

 In this laudable endeavour, your correspondent 

 T. J. Buckton has, as I conceive, fallen into an 

 error. He assumes that those Psalms which are 

 entitled " Songs of Degrees " were appropriated 

 for the domestic use rather than the public ser- 

 vices of the Jews. I cannot consider that the 

 allusions to external objects which he enumerates 

 could affect the argument ; for, on the other hand, 

 we find mention of the House of the Lord (cxxii. 



