344 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 233. 



one according to their kind ; as namely shells, cods, 

 hard hides, prickes, shagge, bristles, haire, downe, 

 feathers, quils, skailes, and fleeces of wool. The verie 

 trunkes and stemmes of trees and plants, shee hath de- 

 fended with bark and rind, yea, and the same sometime 

 double against the injuries both of heat and cold : 

 man alone, poore wretch, she hath laid all naked upon 

 the bare earth, even on his birth-day, to cry and wraide 

 presently from the very first houre that he is borne into 

 this world : in suche sort as, among so many living crea- 

 tures, there is none subject to shed teares and weepe like 

 him. And verily to no babe or infant is it given once to 

 laugh before he be fortie daies old, and that is counted 

 verie early and with the soonest. . . . The child 

 of man thus untowardly borne, and who another day is 

 to rule and command all other, loe how he lyeth bound 

 hand and foot, weeping and crying, and beginning his 

 life with miserie, as if he were to make amends and 

 satisfaction by his punishment unto Nature, for this 

 onely fault and trespass, that he is borne alive." — 

 Plinie's Natural Historie, by Phil. Holland, Lond. 

 1601, fol., intr. to b.vii. 



The following queries are extracted from Sir 

 Thomas Browne's " Common-place Books," Ari- 

 stotle, Lib. A nimal. : 



" Whetlier till after forty days children, though they 

 cry, weep not; or, as Scaliger expresseth it, • Vagiunt 

 sed oculis siccis.' 



" Whether they laugh not upon tickling? 



" Why, though some children have been heard to 

 cry in the womb, yet so few cry at their birth, though 

 their heads be out of the womb ? " — Bonn's ed. iii. 

 358. 



Thompson follows Pliny, and says that man is 

 " taught alone to weep " (" Spring," 350.) ; but — 

 not to speak of the 



" Cruel crafty crocodile, 

 Which, in false grief hiding his harmful guile, 

 Doth weep full sore and sheddeth tender tears," 



as Spenser sings — the camel weeps when over- 

 loaded, and the deer when chased sobs piteously. 

 Thompson himself, in a passage he has stolen from 

 Shakspeare, makes the stag weep : 



" he stands at bay ; 



The big round tears run down his dappled facej 

 He groans in anguish." — Autumn, 452. 



" Steller relates this of the Phoca Ursina, Pallas of 

 the camel, and Humboldt of a small American 

 monkey." — Laurence On Man, Lond. 1844, p. 161. 



Risibility, and a sense of the ridiculous, is ge- 

 nerally considered to be the property of man, 

 though Le Cat states that he has seen a chim- 

 panzee laugh. 



The notion with regard to a child crying at 

 baptism has been already touched on in these 

 pages, Vol. vi., p. 601. ; Vol. vii., p. 96. 



Grose (quoted in Brand) tells us there is a su- 

 perstition that a child who does not cry when 



sprinkled in baptism will not live ; and the same 

 is recorded in Hone's Year-Booh. Eirionnach. 



UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF LORD NELSON. 



The following letter of Lord Nelson may, es- 

 pecially at the present moment, interest and 

 amuse some of the readers of " N. & Q." The 

 original is in my possession, and was given me by 

 the late Miss Churchey of Brecon, daughter of the 

 gentleman to whom it was addressed. Can any 

 of your readers inform me where the " old lines " 

 quoted by the great hero are to be found ? 



E.G.Bass. 

 Ryde, Isle of Wight. 



Merton, Oct. 20, 1 802. 

 Sir, 

 Your idea is most just and proper, that a pro- 

 vision should be made for midshipmen who have 

 served a certain time with good characters, and 

 certainly twenty pounds is a very small allowance ; 

 but how will your surprise be increased, when I 

 tell you that their full pay, when watching, fight- 

 ing, and bleeding for their country at sea, is not 

 equal to that sum. An admiral's half-pay is 

 scarcely equal, including the run of a kitchen, to 

 that of a French cook ; a captain's but little 

 better than a valet's ; and a lieutenant's certainly 

 not equal to a London footman's ; a midshipman's 

 nothing. But as I am a seaman, and faring with 

 them, I can say nothing. I will only apply some 

 very old lines wrote at the end of some former 

 war: 



," Our God and sailor we adore, 

 In time of danger, not before ; 

 The danger past, both are alike requited, 

 God is forgotten, and the sailor slighted." 



Your feelings do you great honour, and I only 

 wish all others in the kingdom were the same. 

 However, if ever I should be placed in a situation 

 to be useful to such a deserving set of young men 

 as our mids, nothing shall be left undone which 

 may be in the power of, 

 Dear Sir, 



Your most obedient servant, 



Nelson and Bronte. 

 Walton Churchey, Esq., 

 Brecon, S. Wales. 



FOLK LORE. 



Devonshire Superstitions. — Seeing that you 

 sometimes insert extracts from newspapers, I for- 

 ward you a copy of a paragraph which appeared 

 in The Times of March 7, 1854, and which is 

 worth a corner in your folk-lore columns : 



" The following gross case of superstition, which oc- 

 curred as late as Sunday se'nnight, in one of the largest 



