♦ KNO\VLEDGE ♦ 



the servants, and do all the work for himself. I have tried that, 

 and it is capital fnn. In a short time it gets as natural as shaving, 

 or soldiering. Hallyabds. 



FORGOTTEN GEORGIAN PHRASES. 



[1838]— "When George Primrose's consin says to him : • Slay I 

 die by an anodyne necklace ; but I had rather be an under-tumkey 

 in Newgate,' who is there in the present year of grace who knows 

 what he means ? It appears that it was a notorious quack charm 

 against the perils of teething, and that mothers never forgave 

 themselves it their children died of convulsions without having 

 tried an anodyne necklace. We may point out that the editor's 

 ingenious note, in which he quotes an advertisement in which it is 

 said to be sold for 58., ' as patronised by the King for the Royal 

 children,' does not quite exhaust the question, for what George's 

 cousin says is : ' May I die !jy an anodyne necklace,' which looks 

 as though, if some regarded it as a medicine, others had found it 

 to be a poison." — Saturdai/ Revieiv, Jan. 12, 188-t, on Mr. A. 

 Dobson's " Vicar of Wakefield." 



Is it not pretty clear that by "anodyne necklace" Goldsmith 

 meant the halter— "an end to all my cares," as Sam Hall sings, 

 with play of words alluding to the quack charm ? However, all 

 anodynes are poisons; and weakly babes may have died of the 

 inhalation, an overdose for them. 



A few lines further on, the Reviewer writes, " We are puzzled 

 by the word 'sussarara.' Mrs. Symmonds says to her husband, 

 " Gentle or simple, out she shall pack with a sussarara." Mr. 

 Dobson quotes one authority which gives as the meaning of the 

 word, "a hard blow." It is met with, in a slightly different form, 



I have often heard my aunt (bom in 1793) say of a delinquent 

 servant, "She deserves a good sesserero" (so I should spell it, 

 pronouncing as if it were Italian or Spanish). I always under- 

 stood this to mean a scolding: there could not have been any 

 question of striking. It is remarkable that domestic words of the 

 other day should be already of doubtful meaning. Hallyards. 



LETTERS RECEIVED AND SHORT ANSWERS. 



WiLLUM Miller. You will probably have gathered from a reply 

 of mine to another correspondent how much I am in accord with 

 you. But, as far as I am concerned, I am impotent in the matter. 

 — F. G. S. Source of quotation previously pointed out by Mr. 

 Smallpeice. — Dr. Lewins. Received, and carefully read. — Balakce. 

 Oh, dear, no ! It is very possible, indeed, for an unskilful rope- 

 dancer to fall while holding his balancing-pole. A little considera- 

 t'-on will show that the centre of gravity of the performer must be 

 vertically over the rope. If it gets outside of the vertical, and the 

 man has no means of shifting it, over he goes. The use of the 

 pole, which is heavily loaded at each end, is to shift the centre of 

 gravity when needed, f.j/., if the man flndshimself disposed to topple 

 over to the right he moves his pole towards the left, and so brings the 

 common centre of gravity of himself and the pole into a point whence 

 a perpendicular would pass centrally through the rope. — Senex. 

 Sodium vapour arrests luminiferous vibrations of the same re- 

 frangibility as those which it emits ; but not necessarily all snch 

 r.ays passing through it, unless it be of sufficient thickness. If I 

 stretch half-a-dozen pianoforte strings across an opening and tune 

 them all in unison to, say, A ; and then on one side of that opening 

 the note A is blown clear and loud on a comet, it will be deadened 

 to a certain extent, but a good deal of the sound will get through. 

 By multiplying the number of strings, though, I might ultimately 

 get sufficient to take up the whole of the undulations starting from 

 the cornet, so that the cornet note should never reach the listener's 

 ear at all. So with sunlight. It is partly arrested by the sodium 

 vapour surrounding the sun ; but some of it gets through, and if we 

 destroy this latter portion by passing it through a sufficient thickness 

 of terrestrial sodium vapour, we ultimately get the D lines really 

 blac'c. — F. W. H. I have been compelled to stop the discussion on mind 

 and matter. Inter alia, it brings letters taking the forms of sermons, 

 which I must perforce exclude, at the risk of being accused of 

 admitting only one side of the argument. I just, however, record 

 your recommendation to Mr. Alexander to read Haeckel's " Pedigree 

 of Man " for himself.— Tycho. It depends upon the meaning you 

 apply to the word. Of old, lunatics were regarded as " moon- 

 struck." For some curious details as to the supposed physical 

 influence of the moon on sleepers in its light in tropical climates 

 (to which you possibly refer), see Vol. VI. of Knowledge, pp. 305, 

 325, and 348.— Rev. S. T. B. Peppix. I am sorry to exclude your 

 temperately-written letters ; but the reply to " Commentator " really 

 assumes the form of an excerpt from a sermon. One thing is abun- 

 dantly evident, and that is that you know nothing whatever of the 

 writings of the greatest and most philosophical naturalist the 



world has yet Sf 



It is by no means necessary to "shut our 

 'open our Darwin." So devout a Christian 

 and good a Catholic as Professor St. George Mivart is a staunch 

 evolutionist, .lust consider how the Church has had to succumb 

 on such scientific questions as the motion of the earth, its age, the 

 date of man's first appearance on its surface, the origin of death, 

 &c. This may possibly tend to abate a little of your " cock- 

 sureness" that the clergy must be right, and men of science 

 wrong, on subjects which the latter have made the study 

 of their lives, but of which the former are ludicrously igno- 

 rant. See the letter of " Meter " in another column as an 

 example of the only way in which such a question as yon 

 raise can be discussed in a purely scientific jonrnal. Note 

 too my reply to " F. W. H." above, concerning the closing of the 

 "Mind and Matter" discussion.- Dr. Barnaedu. Thanks for 



your 



whole 



^0 the purpose of a journal like this. — H. J. Bid 

 The subject in which you are interested has never been treated of 

 in these columns ; and had it been, a rigid rule exists against the 

 presentation of Knowledge gratis to any club, institution, univer- 

 sity, or library whatever.— J. H. Cobbett. You would infallibly 

 have trodden on some one's theological corns, and had I refused 

 to insert a column or two of pulpit declamation in reply to yon, I 

 should have been charitably branded as " lending Knowledge to 

 covert attacks on the faith," &c., &c. The amount of rampant 

 bigotry existing in this last quarter of the nineteenth century 

 would astonish you. — Brix Fberes. Received. — THOEorcH Bass. 

 I am ignorant of any work published in this country having 

 special reference to Canadian farming, bnt you will find a mass of 

 information which cannot fail to be of use to you in " Outlines of 

 Modem Farming," by R. Scott Burn. Crosbv, Lockwood, & Co. 

 publish it, as they do also Yonatt & Burn's ""Complete Grazier," 

 which is an encyclopojdia of cattle-breeding and raising. Both of 

 these are bulky books. I know of no very cheap ones that are 

 worth anything. — Old Jolly. The conductor is, or will be in a few 

 days, on the high seas (I trust not suffering from the height of the 

 seas on). I do earnestly hope, though, that he will see your protest 

 before he is " the death of " you 1 Should any such deplorable result 

 ensue, I, as representing him pro hac vice, should certainly urge 

 strongly on the proprietors of Kxowledge the obligation they 

 would be under to give you a public funeral, with a neat and 

 appropriate brass over your vault, setting forth the circumstances 

 under which you terminated. Why do you not employ some of 

 your illimitable power of "chaff" in answering "Hallyards & 

 Co." ?— LiECT.-CoL. Dooxer. Received.— Carl Siewers. Any 

 and every book sent here is committed to an expert in the subject 

 on which it treats, for careful perusal and review. — F. C. Collixs. 

 All the space available for snch recreations is already given up to 

 Chess and Whist.— J. Osborxe, Coxstaxt Reader, 'and Ax Ix- 

 Player. Shall be handed to "Five of Clubs" 



nhisi 



iHtsicellanta. 



Nitrogen is solidified at a temperature of-2U° and under a 

 pressure of 60 atmospheres, its critical point being — 146" under the 

 pressure of 35 atmospheres. By carrying the rarefaction to 4 mm. 

 of mercury, the author has succeeded in obtaining a temperature 

 of -225°. The solidification point of carbon monoxide is -207' 

 with a pressure of 100 m. of mercury. Oxygen still remains liquid 

 at a temperature considerably below — 211°. 



Sixpenny Telegrams.- The amendment which the new Post- 

 master-General intends to propose when the Bill comes on for dis- 

 dussion is one which, we imagine, will stand but little chance of 

 being accepted by the House. His scheme is to allow addresses to 

 pass free, to charge sixpence for the first three words of the 

 message and a halfpenny for each subsequent word. This would 

 operate most unfairly upon the best customers of the telegraph, 

 who usually adopt sender's addresses of the briefest character. If 

 anything is to be passed "free," it certainly should not be the 

 sender's address, whatever may be urged in favour of so treating 

 the address " To." 



The results of eleven months' use of toughened glass beakers are 

 thus summarised by Mr. R. F. Friswell, in a paper read before the 

 Chemical Society : — " Of twenty beakers, two burst spontaneously, 

 = 10 per cent. ; one burst on hot water being poured in, = 5 per 

 cent.; six became useless from fissures and enfoliation, = 30 per 

 cent. ; eight are in good condition, = 40 per cent. ; three have been 

 broken by unknown means, = 15 per cent. Taking into considera- 

 tion the loss of confidence caused by the high percentage of spon- 

 taneous bursting, it may be said that toughened e'ass is a complete 

 failure in the laboratory. 



