June 17. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



575 



stances passim of puss used in every one of the 

 oblique cases, as well as in the nominative ? 



Tailless Cats (Vol. ix., pp. 10. 111.). — It may- 

 be interesting to your correspondent Shirley 

 Hibberd to know, that the Burmese breed of 

 cats is, like that of the Isle of Man, tailless ; or, 

 if not exactly without tails, the tails they have 

 are so short as to be called so merely by the 

 extremest courtesy. This is the only respect, 

 however, in which they differ from other cats. 



S. B. 



Lucknow. 



Francklyn Household Book (Vol. ix., p. 422.). — 



Say-salt to stop the barrels. — Before heading 

 down a cask of salted meat, the vacant spaces are 

 filled up with salt. 



Giggs and scourge- sticks. — Whip-tops, and 

 whips for spinning them. 



Jumballs. — A kind of gingerbread. 



John P. Stilwell. 



Dorking. 



" Violet-crowned" Athens (Vol. ix., p. 496.). — 

 I have always understood that the adoption of the 

 violet as the heraldic flower of old Athens in- 

 volved, as heraldry so often does, a pun. As you 

 well know, the Greek for violet is \ov, and thence 

 its adoption as the symbolical flower of the chief 

 city in Europe of the Ionian race. Cantab. 



Smith of Nevis and St. Kitfs (Vol. ix., p. 222.). 

 — I find by some curious letters from an old lady, 

 by birth a Miss Williams of Antigua, and widow 

 of the son of the Lieut.-Governor of Nevis, now 

 in the possession of a friend of mine connected 

 with the West Indies, that the arms of that family 

 were — Gules, on a chevron between three bezants 

 or, three cross crosslets sable. And the crest, 

 from a ducal coronet or, an Indian goat's head 

 argent. 



This may facilitate the search of your corre- 

 spondent for the affiliation of that family to the 

 United Kingdom. B. 



Hydropathy (Vol. ix., p. 395.). — " John Smith, 

 CM." (i. e. clock- maker), of the parish of St. 

 Augustin, London, was the author of several 

 pamphlets. He published in the year 1723 a 

 treatise in recommendation of the medicinal use 

 of water as " a universal remedy," as well by 

 drinking as by applying it externally to the body. 

 In the British Museum there is a French trans- 

 lation of it, which appeared in Paris, a.d. 1725. 

 This is a proof of the notoriety which the treatise 

 obtained. The tenth edition, dated " Edinburgh, 

 1740," contains additions communicated by Mr. 

 Ralph Thoresby, P.R.S., and others. In the year 

 1695 he published a short treatise entitled A de- 

 signed End to the Socinian Controversy; or, a 



rational and plain Discourse to prove, that no other 

 Person but the Father of Christ is God Most 

 High. This attracted the notice of the civil 

 power, and by order of parliament it was burnt, 

 and the author prosecuted. (See Wallace's Anti- 

 Trinitarian Biography, vol. iii. p. 398., London, 

 1850.) N.W. S. 



Leslie and Dr. Middleton (Vol. ix., p. 324.). — 



" Middleton was one of the men who sought for 

 twenty years some historical facts that might conform 

 to Leslie's four conditions, and yet evade Leslie's logic." 

 — Blackwood's Magazine, July, 1842, p. 5. 



J. O. B. 



Lord Brougham and Home Tooke (Vol. ix., 

 p. 398.). — I have not Lord Brougham's book 

 before me, but I have no doubt but that Q. has 

 missed the meaning of his lordship. The reference 

 would probably be to Home Tooke's anticipation 

 of the strange immoral reveries of Emerson and 

 others, that truth is entirely subjective ; because 

 the word bears etymological relation to "to 

 trow," to think, or believe : and so truth has no 

 objective existence, but is merely what a man 

 troweth. If that be an argument, Lord Brougham 

 would say then the law of libel would be unjust, 

 merely because "libel" means primarily a little 

 book ; he might have added that, according to 

 Home Tooke and Mr. Emerson, if a man had 

 been killed by falling against a post at Charing 

 Cross, a jury might deny the fact of the violent 

 death, because "post" means a place for deposit- 

 ing letters, and he had not been near St. Martin's- 

 le-grand. The remark of Lord Brougham is not 

 as to a fact, but is a reductio ad absurdum. 



W. Denton. 



It is suggested to Q. (Bloomsbury), that Lord 

 Brougham meant not to say that Home Tooke 

 had ever held or maintained this strange doctrine, 

 " that the law of libel was unjust and absurd, be- 

 cause libel means a little book," but that he would 

 have done so, or might have done so consistently 

 with his etymological theory, namely, that the 

 present sense of words is to be sought in their 

 primitive signification : e.g., in the Diversions of 

 Purley, vol. ii. p. 403., Home Tooke says, — 



" True, as we now write it, or trew, as it was formerly 

 written, means simply and merely that which is trowed; 

 and, instead of its being a rare commodity upon earth, 

 except only in words, there is nothing but truth in the 

 world." 



If we ought now to use the word truth only in 

 this sense, then, pari ratione, we ought to mean 

 only a little book when we use the word libel. 



J. O. B. 



Thorpe. 



Irish Rhymes (Vol. viii., p. 250.). — A. B. C. 

 asks, " Will any one say it was through ignorance 



