48 
Correspondence. 
All communications relating to advertisements, contributions, or the supply 
of this magazine, should be addressed to the Editor, care of Mr. Butler, High 
Wycombe. 
ceding the date of publication. 
Contributions must be sent in before the 15th of the month pre- 
The Editor will be glad to receive notes con- 
cerning any of our local plants and animals, their times of appearing, their 
popular names and traditions, abnormal forms and colours, §'c.; these must be 
authenticated by the writer's name and address, but not necessarily for 
publication. 
Hesenon. — “ Not unfrequently 
rendered ‘Ebony’!” says Mr. 
Britten (p. 14 of No. 1 of this Maga- 
zine), with a note of exclamation. 
But ebony is the right rendering, and 
not merely the best, but the only 
possible rendering into the English 
language of the word hebenon, sup- 
posing this latter to be a bond fide 
word, and not a monster in classical 
form, corrupted by some transcriber 
or dictator from the commonplace 
English henbane. The word is 
‘Oriental (originally Semitic, I be- 
lieve), being found in the Hebrew 
Bible (Ezekiel xxvii. 15.) as habenim, 
plural, according to Gesenius and De 
Wette, from the word being imported 
from foreign countries in the shape 
of planks, like our deals. It appears 
in the Greek as hebelos and hebenos, 
in the Latin as hebenus and hebenum 
or hebenon, and inthe modern Euro- 
pean languages as ebony, ebene, ebano, 
&e., &e., all which signify the black 
hard heart of the Diospyros hebenum, 
originally, as we learn from Virgil, 
to be found only in India. 
* Sola India nigrum 
Fert iebenum.” 
Though the modern languages have 
dropped the h, it found in the form 
of heben in our old English poets. So 
it appears reasonable and natural to 
interpret hebenum or hebenon, ebony. 
Mr. B. as I understand him, takes 
hebenon to be a mistake for henbane. 
But do the symptoms described by 
the poet agree in any one particular 
with those detailed in Mr. B.’s amus- 
ing little monastic fiction > Why not 
allow Shakspere to make use of the 
black, ill-smelling, deadly-looking, 
“cursed’’ tree as a poetical poison ? 
On the other hand, only fancy the 
royal victim of this solemn tragedy, 
meeting his death by — henbane! 
Is it possible that he, of that more 
than mortal ‘ form and combination,’ 
Where every God did seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man — 
could have been such a miserable 
chicken as to succumb to a small 
quantity of this contemptible bird- 
poison? Iam under the impression 
that the ebony is the ‘‘ tree of death”’ 
of the Persian paradise ; but in con- 
sequence of the confused and index- 
less state of the German tomes, 
which are the authorities on Oriental 
archeology, cannot verify this. 
E. Ase Prat y 
I rurnx it is a fact worth knowing, 
that beech leaves are an excellent 
substitute for feathers in beds, and 
in this part, they may be gathered 
with little trouble and expense. 
Gathered about the fall, and some- 
what before they are much frost- 
bitten, they form the best and easiest 
mattresses in the world, instead of 
straw; because, besides their tender- 
ness and lying loosely together, they 
continue sweet for seven or eight 
years, long before which time straw 
becomes musty and hard. 
Brrcu Lear. 
«* Aw immaterial principle, similar 
to that which, by its excellence, 
places man so much above animals 
does exist unquestionably in the 
latter, and whether it be called soul, 
reason, or instinct, it presents in the 
