84 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. .36. 



arising out of the complaints of members that 

 strangers will not publish to the world all that 

 they hear pass in debate. Tliis is one of the in- 

 consistencies resulting from the determination of 

 the House not expressly to recognise the presence 

 of strangers ; but, after all, I am not aware that 

 any practical inconvenience flows from it. The 

 non-reporting strangers occupy a gallery at the 

 end of the house immediately opposite the Speaker's 

 chair; but the right hon. gentleman, proving the 

 truth of the saying, " None so blind as he who will 

 not see," never perceives them until just as a divi- 

 sion is about to t;ike place, when he invariably 

 orders them to withdraw. When a member wishes 

 to exclude strangers he addresses the Speaker, 

 saying, "I think. Sir, I see a stranger or strangers 

 in the house," whereupon the Speaker instantly 

 directs strangers to withdraw. The Speaker issues 

 his order in these words : — " Strangers must 

 withdraw." C. Ross. 



Strangers in the House of Commons. — As a rider 

 to the notice of CH. in "Notes and Queries," 

 it may be well to quote for correction the follow- 

 ing remarks in a clever article in the last Edin- 

 burgh Reuiew, on Mr. Lewis' Authority in Matters 

 of Opinion. The Reviewer says (p. 547.) : — 



" Tills practice (viz., of publishing the debates in the 

 House of Commons) w/iich, &c., i*- not merely unpro- 

 tected by law — it is positirely illegal. Even the presence 

 of auditors is a violation of the standing orders of the 

 House." 



Ed. S. Jackson. 



FOLK LORE. 



High Spirits comidered a Presage of impending 

 Calamitj/ or Death : — 



1. '' How oft when men are at the point of death 



Have they been merry ! which their keepers call 

 A lightning before death." 



Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 3. 



2. " C'etait le jour de Noel [1759]. Je m'eiais leve 

 d'assez bonne heure, et avec U'le humenr plus gaie que 

 de coutume. Dans les idees de vieille femme, cela 

 presage toujours quelque chose de triste .... Pour 

 cette fois pourt.mt le hasard justifia la croyanee." — 

 JiJejiioires de J. Casiincva, vol. iii p. 29. 



3. " Upon Saturday last .... the Duke did rise 

 up, in a well-disposed humour, out of his bed, and cut 

 a caper or two .... Lieutenant Felton made a tlirust 

 with a comnioii tenpenny knife, over Fryer's arm at 

 the Duke, whicli lighted so fatally, that he slit liis 

 heart in two, leaving the knife sticking in the body." — 

 Death of Duke of Biickiiiyham; Howell. Jum. Letters, 

 Aug. 5, 1628. 



4. " On this fatal evening [Feb. 20, 1436], the revels 

 of the court were kept up to a late hour .... the 

 prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay 

 and clieerful spirits. He even jested, if we may i)e- 

 lieve the cotempoiary manuscript, about a prophecy 



which had declared that a kin;; should that year be 

 slain.'' — Death of King James /.,- Tytler, Hist. Scotland, 

 vol. iii. p. 306. 



5. " ' I think,' said the old gardener to one of the 

 maids, 'the ganger's fie;' by which word the common 

 people express those violent spirits which they think a 

 presage of death." — Guy Mannering, chap. 9. 



6. " H. W. L." said : " I believe the bodies of the 

 four persons seen by the jury, were those of G. B., 

 W. B., J. B., and T. B. On Friday night they were 

 all very merry, and IMrs. B. said she fenred something 

 would happen before they went to bed, because they 

 were so happy." — Evidence given at inquest on bodies 

 of four persons killed by explosion of Jireworh-manxi factory 

 in Bermondsey, Friday, Oct. 12, 1849. See Times, 

 Oct. 17, 1849. 



Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, are evidently notices of the Belief; 

 Nos. 3, 4, are "what you will." !Many of your 

 correspondents may be able to supply earlier and 

 more curious illustrations. G. Forbes. 



June 19. 



THE HTDRO-INCIIBATOR. 



Most, if not all, of your readers have heard of 

 the newly-invented machine for hatching and rear- 

 ing chickens, without the maternal aid of the hen ; 

 probably many of them have paid a visit (and 

 a shilling) at No. 4. Leicester Square, where the 

 incubator is to be seen in full operation. The fol- 

 lowing extract will, therefore, be acceptable, as it 

 tends to show the truth of the inspired writer's 

 words, "There is no new thing under the sun :" — 



" Therefore .... it were well we made our remarks 

 in some creatures, that might be continually in our 

 power, to ob^erve in them the course of nature, every 

 day and hour. Sir John Heydon, the Lieutenant of his 

 Majesties Ordnance (that geiieious and knowing gen- 

 tleman and consummate soiildior, both in theory and 

 practice) was the first that instructed me how to do 

 this, by means of a furnace, so made as to imitate the 

 warmth of a sitting hen. In which you may lay several 

 eggs to hatch ; and by breaking them at several ages, 

 you may distinctly observe every hourly nuitation in 

 them, if you please. The first will be, that on one side 

 you shall find a great respkndent clearness in the white. 

 After a while, a little spot of red matter, like blood, 

 will appear in the midst of that clearness, fast'ued to 

 the yolk, which will have a motion of opening and 

 shutting, so as sometimes you will s-ee it, and straight 

 again it will vaiiish from your sight, and indeed, at 

 first it is so little that you cannot see it, but by the 

 motion of it ; for at every pulse, as it opens you may 

 see it, and immeiliately again it shuts, in such sort as 

 it is not to be discerned. From tliis red spick, after a 

 while, there will stream out a numbir of little (almost 

 imperceptible) red veins. At the end of some of which, 

 in time, there will be gathered together a knot of 

 matter, which by little and little will take the form of 

 a htad ; and you will, ere long, begin to discern eyes 

 and a beak in it. All this while the first red spot 

 of blood grows bigger and solider, till at length it be- 



