360 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[2nd S, No 18., May 8, °56, 
ceptable to Mr. Frasrr, but worth preserving in 
our valuable miscellany. 
When Mr. Britton was in the West collecting 
materials for his well-known work The Beuuties 
of England and Wales, Mr. Scaddon, among other 
more trustworthy information, told him that an 
epitaph in Cornish was to be found in Paul 
Churchyard, and on Mr. Britton expressing a 
desire for a copy, he undertook to procure it for 
him; and to save his credit concocted, with the 
assistance of Pryce’s Grammar and Vocabulary of 
the Cornish Language, the lines to the memory of 
Doll Pentreath. The ingenious fabrication was 
discovered in time to prevent Mr. Britton giving 
them to the world, but the actual existence of 
the epitaph has since been erroneously stated in 
various works on Cornwall. 
Dolly died in 1777, at the advanced age of 
Ninety-one, and her burial is thus noticed in the 
register of Paul parish : 
“Dorothy Jeffery was buried December 27. This is 
the famous Dolly Pentreath (her maiden name) spoken 
of by Daines Barrington in the Archeologia,” 
Although few could converse in the Cornish 
language when this learned antiquary made his 
visit in 1768, yet it must have been still far from 
extinct, as I find from some manuscript memoirs 
left by my father, who was born in 1763, that he 
was taught when a child the Lord’s Prayer, &c. 
in the old tongue. 
It is rather a curious coincidence that of the 
three dialects which sprung from the ancient 
British, viz. the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Ar- 
moric, the Cornish should have lifgered longest 
in the parish of Paul, and that the Armorie should 
now he chiefly spoken in the neighbourhood of 
St. Pol de Leon in Brittany. I spent a consider- 
able time there in 1816-17, and well remember 
my surprise at hearing some Welsh women con- 
versing with the peasants in the market in their 
own patois, the radicals being so alike that they 
could understand each other without much dif- 
ficulty. There can be little doubt that Brittany 
was peopled from Cornwall: the similarity in the 
names of places bears ample testimony to their 
common origin. Joun J. A. Boas. 
Alverton Vean, Penzance, 
BOOK-WORMS, 
(2"4 §. i. 143. 244.) 
I must not let my Query, regarding this pest, 
pass without another Note; for the subject, like 
an old tune, may be much benefited by a little 
“ventilation.” It is for lack of readers, for want 
of air and light, that moths and book-worms hold 
undivided sway. 
By your fair correspondent I must stand repri- 
manded for not visiting the great national institu- 
tion in Great Russell Street, ere I troubled your 
pages. Had I done so, without her kind aid, I 
fear it would have been to visit the library rather 
than the Natural History department—to witness 
an effect rather than discover its author. That 
there is one sort of book-worm for covers, and 
another for paper, I cannot think true: for we 
find all substances, — wood, paper, and leather, — 
pierced indiscriminately, 
To J. F. M. I tender my best thanks, and send 
some specimens of different leathers, kindly for- 
warded by Messrs. J. and J. Leighton, book- 
binders, of Brewer Street, as tests to destroy 
book-worms. They are prepared with corrosive 
sublimate and colocynth, as recommended by one 
of our first chemists. I should feel much pleased 
by J. F. M., or any other “game preservers,” if 
they would introduce samples of papers and 
leathers so prepared amongst their live-stock, and 
note the effects in some future numbers of the 
“N, & Q.” Luxe Limner, F.S.A. 
“To give these mites a disrelish for books, the paste 
which the binders make use of, and which is supposed 
chiefly to attract them, has often been mingled with 
bitter substances, as wormwood, coloquintida, &c. without 
any success. Mineral salts, to which all insects have an 
aversion, afford the only remedy. The salt called arcanum 
duplicatum, allum, and vitriol, are proper for this purpose. 
By mingling therefore a small quantity of any of these 
mineral salts in the paste, books will be effectually pre- 
served from the attacks of all sorts of worms and insects. 
“M. Prediger, in his Instructions to Bookbinders, printed 
at Leipsiec, in the German language in 1741, says, that if 
binders were to make their paste of starch instead of flour, 
worms would not touch the books. He also directs pul- 
verised allum mixed with a little fine pepper, to be 
strewed between the book and the cover, and also upon 
the shelves of the library; and for the more effectual 
preservation of the books in libraries, he advises rubbing 
the books well, in the months of March, July, and Sep- 
tember, with a woollen cloth dipped in powdered allum. 
And it were to be wished that for the future all book- 
binders would make their paste in the manner recom- 
mended; but I would not advise depending upen starch 
without any admixture of mineral salts.” — Gentleman’s 
Magazine, Feb. 1754, p. 73. ; : 
“Sir John Thorold (one of the first-rate bibliomaniacs 
during the time of the Pinelli sale) used to be very par- 
ticular (so Mr. Payne informs me) in his directions to the 
binder respecting a due portion of alum in the paste; and 
I am credibly informed by a gentleman, who, a few years 
ago had some books bound by two different binders at 
Vienna, that one set engendered the book-worm, and the 
other did not. Thus Mr. Prediger discourses rationally 
in his Instructions to German Book-binders. There is no 
doubt, I apprehend, that hog-skin binding is more favour- 
able to the breed of the book-worm than any other 
species; and this discovery is exclusively due to the 
Bustathius of the day! Mr. Douce has also a melancholy 
proof of the worm-nutritive powers of hog-skin, in an old 
MS. lately bound by Hering in that species of coverture.” 
— Dr. Dibdin’s Bibliographical Decameron, vol. ii. p. 446. 
It is said that worms seldom attack books 
printed upon English-made paper ? 
Epwarp F, RimpBautt. 
