2^ S. IX. Apj:il 14. 'CO.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



295 



has written, " This high spirit has appeared since 

 in the Henry and John Colletts of Lower Slaugh- 

 ter, Bourton, and Naunton, Gloucestershire." I 

 can vouch for the existence of more than one 

 family of that name in. the above locality a few 

 years ago ; as to their retention of the ancestral 

 14 high spirit" I can offer no opinion. 



W. J. Deane. 



A Legend of the Zuiderzee (2 nJ S. ix. 140.) — 

 A somewhat similar instance of worldly wisdom to 

 that shown by Ivo (not Tvo) Hoppers, I find re- 

 corded in K. E. Oelsner's Verhandeling over Ma- 

 homed, of Tafereel van den Iuvloed van zijne 

 Godsdienstleer op de Volhen der Middeleeuicen. 

 Eene Prijsverhandeling, behroond door liet Instituiit 

 van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in Frankrijk. 

 Naar de verm, en door den Schr. verb. Hoogd. Uilg. 

 Te Franelter, by G. Ypma, 1820 (1 vol. in 8vo.). 

 On p. 8. it says : — 



"The history of the Arabic tribes, mixed upas it is 

 with fables, does not reach up higher than to that re- 

 markable revolution which is celebrated under the name 

 of the JBrcakinp-throvgh near Mareb or Saba* ; an occur- 

 rence, in all likelihood, contemporary with the rise of the 

 Sassanides (Sassanians?), a well-known Persian dynasty. 



"In olden time Saba, a son of Yak-Hehel, had built a 

 dike of tremendous dimensions between two mountains, 

 and thus gathered into a large basin the water coming 

 down from seventy torrents, in order to let it out at set 

 periods through floodgates, contrived for the purpose, and 

 irrigate the circumjacent fields. In course of time, or by 

 fortuitous events, the dike had become unsafe. A Ham- 

 yarite t. named Amru Ben Amez, foresaw its giving way, 

 which soon afterwards occurred. But not before he had 

 precipitately removed with all that belonged to his family. 

 According to Sylvestre de Sacy this removal took place 

 in the 150th to 170 th year of our era. 



"After his departure from Yemen, Amez wandered to- 

 wards the regions where the children of Akk, the brother 

 of Maad, the son of Adnan, resided. These allowed him 

 to settle in their lands, whilst he sent out three of his 

 sons with other fugitives to discover a fit dwelling-place. 

 Amru Ben Amer, however, did not live to see them come 

 back, and Taleba, one of his sons, placed himself at the 

 head of his people." 



Do any vestiges of the old Saba dike still exist, 

 and what became of the disrupted waters? Did 

 they follow up their old courses again ? 



J. H. van Lennep. 



Zeyst. 



FOHESHADOWED PHOTOGRAPHY (2 nd S. ix. 122.) 



Bishop Wilkins's plan for representing letters on 



* Saba in Yemen is identical with Marob [sic"}. On 

 the authority of Hamza, Sylvestre de Sacy brings back 

 this violent breaking through of the waters (seil alarini) 

 to about 400 years before Mahomet. See Mtm. de Liter. 

 t. xlviii. p. 540. 



t The names of Hamyarite and of Sabaene are appel- 

 lations of identical signification, though the second per- 

 tain to a particular tribe of Saba's lineage. IJomeir 

 means red. The founder of this family received this sur- 

 name from the red suit with which he constantly ap- 

 peared in public. Cf. Volnev, Chronologie tPHe'rodote, p. 

 203. 



a wall has nothing to do with photography. It 

 is a simple optical experiment, by which any 

 characters painted with some opaque substance 

 on a mirror are represented when the light of the 

 sun is reflected by the mirror upon a wall. 



If the mirror is held so as to face the sun, and 

 the reflection thrown upon a wall in the shade, 

 the characters will be those traced on the mirror, 

 but inverted with respect to right and left. 



If the mirror be laid on the ground, so that the 

 light is reflected to a wall facing the sun, but on a 

 shaded part of the wall, the characters repre- 

 sented by reflection will be those on the mirror, 

 but inverted with respect to top and bottom. 



The experiment can be tried in a room, and is 

 very easily made ; but it is no step at all towards 

 photography. T. C. 



Durham. 



" Songs and Poems of Love and Drollery " 

 (2 nd S. ix. 102.) — Thomas Weaver was certainly 

 the author of this book. He was turned out of 

 the University of Oxford by the Presbyterians for 

 writing the volume, and his book was denounced 

 as a seditious libel against the government. He 

 afterwards degenerated into the office of an excise- 

 man at Liverpool, where he was called Captain 

 Weaver, and where he is supposed to have died 

 in obscurity about 1G62. There is a rare portrait 

 of him by Marshall, prefixed to his 



"Plantagenet's Tragical Story, or the Death of King 

 Edward the Fourth ; with the Unnatural Voyage of 

 liichard the Third through the Red Sea of his Innocent 

 Nephews' Bioud to his Usurped Crown, 8vo. 1G49." 



The Songs and Poems of Love and Drollery are 

 not so rare as Beloe supposed. Copies occur in 

 the sale catalogues of most of the eminent collec- 

 tors of old English poetry. Heber's copy (Part 

 IV. No. 2379.) was purchased by Thorpe for 

 21. 5s. A perfect copy may be seen at Oxford 

 among Malone's books in the Bodleian. 



Edward F. Kimbault. 



Archiepiscopal Mitres (2 nd S. ix. 188.) — I 

 have always understood that there was no dif- 

 ference between the archiepiscopal and the epis- 

 copal mitre, and that the Bishop of Durham alone 

 bears the mitre issuing out of a ducal coronet in 

 right of the Palatinate. This is the view taken 

 by Robson in his British Heraldry, who adds : — 

 " Many writers on heraldry have copied each 

 other in assigning a ducal coronet to the archie- 



• • • 



piscopal mitre, but it is an error which ought to 

 be rectified." G. II. D. 



MiiteUmtcuS. 



NOTES ON BOOKS. 



The Life of Edmond Mahne, Editor of Shakspcare, 

 with Selections from his Manuscript Anecdotes. By Sir 

 James Prior. With a Portrait. (Smith, Elder, & Co.) 



We entirely agree with Sir James Prior, that " he who 



