488 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 112. 



and a mitre, a cannon and spiritual thunderbolts, 

 a trophy of guns and spears, &c., and one of di- 

 lemmas (represented by a pair of bull's horns), 

 syllogisms (made like a tliree-pronged foik), and 

 the like; these, ending with a battle on one side, 

 a convention of bishops on the other, sliow the 

 power whicli (as Hobbes wouhl have it) eacli arm 

 of the commonwealth should be able to have at its 

 command. The whole pieture is at best an absurd 

 conceit, and very unworthy of the author of the 

 Leviathan. H. A. B. 



The best edition of Hobbes's works was printed 

 1750. The print oi Leviathan in it is neither like 

 Charles nor Cromwell, of whom I have old and 

 good prints, and many. The print has at the 

 bottom of it " Written by Thos. Hobbs, 1651." 



C. J. W. 



Age of Trees (Vol. iv., p. 401.). — I am rather 

 surprised that your correspondent L., in his enu- 

 meration of remarkable trees, and collections of 

 trees, in Great Britain, makes no mention, whilst 

 on the subject ofyew, of the splendid collection of 

 old yew tiees in Kingley Bottom, near Chichester, 

 in Sussex. Should L. never have visited this 

 charming spot, and its green antiquities, I can 

 promise him a rich treat whenever he does so. 

 Common report of the neighbourhood, from time 

 immemorial, gives these venerable trees a date as 

 far back as the landing of the sea-kings on the 

 coast of Sussex ; and sundry poems ty local bards 

 have been written on this theme. 



On one of the most prominent of the South 

 Down Hills, rising immediately above the yew-tree 

 valley, and called Bow Hill, are two large, and 

 some smaller tumuli, which are always called by 

 the natives the graves of the sea-kings, who with 

 their followers are supposed to have fallen in a 

 battle fought under tliese very yew trees. 



Can anybody tell me if the age of any of these 

 trees has ever been ascertained ? Kingley Bottom, 

 or, as people now-a-days prefer calling it, Kingley 

 Vale, is so much frequented as a spot ibr pic-nic3 

 and festive days, that I have no doubt many of 

 your readers have seen the trees to which I refer, 

 and can bear me out in asserting that they are 

 worihy of ranking, in age and beauty, with any of 

 their species in tlie kingdom. Scandinavian. 



The "Hethel Thorn," so well known to many 

 Norfolk people, is on a farm now the property 

 of that niunilicent patron of historical literature, 

 Mr. Hudson Gurncy, by whom it was juircha^ed 

 from Sir Thomas Beevor. The first Sir Thomas 

 always said it was mentioned in a deed of 1200 

 and odd, as a boundary, under the appellation of 

 "the Old Thorn." It is stated, also, that it is 

 mentioned in son)e chronicle us Uie thorn round 

 which a meeting of insurgent peasantry was held 

 during the reign of King John (can any readers 

 of "Notes and Queries " give a reference to the 



precise passage ?). An etching of this interesting 

 lelic has been made by Mr. Ninham. The invo- 

 lution of its branches, which are all liollow tubes, 

 as heavy as iron, is most curious ; and although 

 the tree is certainly diminished of late years, it 

 still puts out leaves and berries vigorously. 



W. J. T. 



Treatise against Ecfdvocation (Vol. iv., p. 419.). 

 — Your correspondent Eupatoe has, in his exa- 

 mination of the MS. of this treatise, overlooked a 

 title prefixed by Garnet, which furnishes the head- 

 ing by which the book is correctly entered in the 

 Catalogue of the Laudian SISS. as A Treatise 

 against (not of av for) Lying and Fi-auduleut Dis- 

 siimdation. " Of" was first written, but at once 

 crossed out, and " against " written after it, not 

 interlined. Of the two errors which Eupatob 

 points out, the one was made at the press, by 

 failure in reading the contraction for "verbo," 

 which is p2-iiited correctly at length at p. 43., and 

 the other was a mistake on the part of the tran- 

 scriber. W. D. M. 



Lycian Inscriptions (Vol. iv., p. 383.). — As to 

 the double language in H(mier of the gods and 

 men, Heyne and others have thought (ad II. A. 

 403.) that the one was the old language, the other 

 the modern. See Clarke ib., who thinks one was 

 the learned name, the other the vulgar : but gives 

 a scholion of the former opinion. The passages 

 are as follow : 



Gotls. Men. 



//. A. 403. - Briareus - - iEgfcon. 



B. 81;3. - TombofMyrInc - Batlea. 



E. 291. - Chalcis - - - Cymiiidis. 



T. 74. - Xanthus - - Scamander. 



All these words, except one, are plain Greek, — 

 and that one is a word of men. It is impossible, 

 therefoi-e, that the gods' language could have been 

 the antiquated Greek language. 



In the Odyssey (K. 305.) Mercury says that a 

 certain plant is called Moly by the gods, and that 

 it is very difficult for men to find. The answer to 

 the question. What do men call it ? therefore would 

 probably have been, that they have no name for it 

 at all. It is an odd word, not easy to derive, and 

 ending in u ; which Aristotle says is the ending of 

 only five words in Greek, and one of those, Sctti/, 

 was obsolete as an appellative in Aristotle's time. 



Ichor, though apjdied in Homer to the gods, he 

 does not say was a word of the gods ; and as it is 

 used in Hippocrates, it is more probably a dialectic 

 than an antiquated word. Its termination, how- 

 ever is rare ; and in another instance, reK/iup, was 

 obsolete in Aristotle's time (Rhet. init.). 



As to the Lycian language, the alphabet is said, 

 in the appendix to Fellows, to resemble partly the 

 Greek, ])artly the Zend, and one or two letters 

 the Etruscan. The language is said (ib. 430.) to 

 resemble the Zend more than any other known 



