290 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2»a S. VI. 145., Oct. 9. '68. 



friend, and my desire to know something of its 

 authorship and bibliography. I subjoin the title 

 of the fourth edition, which, the preface states, is 

 printed " in a much cheaper form than before :" — 



" The Swiss Family Kobinson ; or, Adventures of a 

 Father and Mother and Four Sons in a Desert Island: 

 The genuine progress of the Story forming a clear illus- 

 tration of the first principles of Natural History, and 

 many branches of Science which most immediately apply 

 to the Business of Life> To which are added Notes of 

 Reference explanatory of the subjects treated of. With 

 Plates, and a Map of the Island. Fourth Edition. Lon- 

 don : printed for M. J. Godwin & Co. 1821. Price seven 

 shilli7igs in boards." Pp. 434. 8vo. 



The story Is supposed to begin soon after the Re- 

 volution of 1798. Who wrote the Second Series, 

 and when did it appear ? Let me ask also with 

 respect to the authorship, &c. of a similar fiction, 

 — Sir Edwai'd Seaivard's Narrative. 



Jack Robinson. 



[The Second Series of The Swiss Family Robinson was 

 first published by Sampson Low in 1849. In the Intro- 

 duction it is stated that the First Series had passed 

 through twelve editions. Both Series are entered in the 

 British Museum Catalogue as translations from the Ger- 

 man of J. D. Wyss. The authorship of Sir Edward 



SeawarrVs Narrative, edited by Jane Porter, was discussed 

 in "N.&Q." l«'S.v. 10.185. 352., but without any satis- 

 factory result.] 



^^ Fronte capillata," Sfc. — On a wooden sun-dial 

 attached to the church of Horton, nearWimborne, 

 Dorset, there is the following inscription : " Post 

 est occasio calva." The prefix in Bacon's Novum 

 Organon is thus given : " Fronte capillata,"*and 

 thus the limping (" Fronte capillata post est occa- 

 sio calva") hexameter is completed. I wish to 

 know the author of the verse, and have been re- 

 commended to write to you. Thomas Case. 



Horton Vicarage, Wimborne, Dorset. 



[The authorship of this oft-quoted hexameter was dis- 

 cussed in our V- S. iii. pp. 8. 43. 92. 124. 140. 286., where 

 it is shown that the author is Dionysius Cato, who, in his 

 Distichorum de Moribus, lib. ii. D. sxvi., writes as fol- 

 lows : — 



" Rem tibi quam uosces aptam, dimitfere noli; 

 Fronte capillata, post est occasio calva." 

 Thelast line, with the substitution of "es" for "est," occurs 

 in the drama of Occasio, puolished by Johannes D.ivid, 

 Soc. Jesu Sacerd., at Antwerp, in 1G05. The Rev. J. E. 

 B. Mayor, in our 1" S. i. 427., in a note on Bacon's Essay 

 on Delays, where he speaks of a common verse which 

 says : " Occasion turneth a bald noddle, after she hath 

 presented her locks in front, and no hold taken," has 

 pointed out the Greek original in an Epigram by Posidip- 

 pus, printed by Brunck in his Anakcta, ii. 49., and in 

 Jacob's Anthol. ii. 49.] 



3Srj]It>tf. 



CONCRETE. 



(2"" S. v. 231.) 



G. R. L. says : "The extensive use of concrete 

 in various fonus in Great Britain is remarkable. 



Its practical use is very great, and an immense 

 saving is effected." He then inquires : "Has any- 

 one connected his name with this mixture of small 

 materials and lime ? And when should we date 

 its recent introduction ? Of course we know that 

 the Romans used concrete." 



The noun concrete, in the builder's art, means 

 an indurating cement formed by concretion — a 

 coalition of separate particles into one mass — and 

 is a limited technicality in architecture. It might 

 be more logically used as an adjective, as concrete 

 mortar or cement ; and as a substantive, to avoid 

 collision with grammarians and logicians, in their 

 abstract and concrete quantities, concrement, a 

 mass formed by concretion, might be substituted. 

 But Englishmen in general, and workmen in par- 

 ticular, have the habit, for the sake of brevity, of 

 perverting adjectives into substantives ; as the 

 " inclines," " gradients," and such like change- 

 lings of the railway vocabulary. 



As G. R. L. says, this mode of laying founda- 

 tions and filling in thick walls was well known to 

 the ancient Romans, and also to modern Ita- 

 lians in the work called emphatically Pisan*, from 

 being first or most largely used in Pisa, and in 

 many parts of England and Ireland. 



In reply to the first question — whether anyone 

 has connected his name with concrete mixture — 

 I know not ; but to the second — when we can date 

 its recent introduction — I can speak from my own 

 knowledge and long practice as a house-builder, 

 that it is of early date. In foundations, where 

 oak sleepers have been laid across them, they have 

 been filled in with hard bricks and sound frag- 

 ments, called by bricklayers mds, and cemented 

 by liquid mortay formed of hot lime and sand, 

 called grout f, from the Saxon jpuc, coarse meal, 

 or oats devested of their husks. 



The first concreted foundation of magnitude 

 was laid by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A., under the 

 General Post Office in St. Martin's-le-Grand. 

 When this great destruction of streets, lanes, 

 alleys, and courts was completed, and the site laid 

 open, a greater diversity of subsoil was never be- 

 fore exposed to view, as I am a living and almost 

 daily witness of the progress of this fine substruc- 

 tion. It was a maze of cesspools and wells of 

 various depths and densities ; sewers, drains, and 

 bog-holes, intersected with brick foundations of 

 various ages, from the time of the Romans to the 

 Great Fire ; many of them as hard as the back- 

 bone of Mount Leinster, and presented a di- 

 versity of hard and soft places that would have 

 puzzled any architect, from Vitruvius, with his 

 close-piled compages of timber for the ground- 



* See Elmes's Dictionary of the Fine Arts, articles Fouk- 

 DATioN, Pise', &c. 



■j- Bricklayers usually term taking any good drink after 

 their meal, filling up the chinks with grout. 



