356 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[October 1, 1886. 



A rabbit is called a " Molly Cotton-tail " in Virginia ; but 

 not in Virginia only. The word is used in both the 

 Carolinas and in Georgia. It has now spread westward, 

 and I have heard it used in Missouri. 



Gum. This word supplies the absurdest of my critic's 

 mistakes, except only the next, which I have preserved as a 

 bonne hoi'che. "Gum is," he says, "the Philadelphian's 

 extension of the word ' gum ' to include all manufactures 

 of india-rubber, and especially overshoes." Indeed .' 

 Bartlett tells us all about " gums " for overshoes ; and the 

 very story which my critic gives in illustration, as a new 

 one, was told me at the Century Club, New York, in 

 December 187.3 (ah ! pleasant evenings at the Century, if I 

 ought not rather to say pleasant nights — veritable nodes 

 Amhrosianw) ; and then it was told as an old one, and not 

 by any means Philadelphian, or even Pennsylvanian, but 

 American, pur son;/. The story is good, howevei'. A man 

 arriving on a muddy night at the house of a friend (an 

 untravelled city man of New York), was asked where his 

 wife was. He replied, " She's wiping her gums on the mat." 

 I heard the word " gum " thus used only a day or two since 

 bv an American step daughter of mine, here in Missouri. 

 As a matter of curiosity, I have asked my father-in-law 

 what he knows of the use of this word in "old Virginny." 

 He says that half a century ago, at least, everything made 

 of india-rubber was called a " gum " there, without any 

 other name except when doubt might arise. Thus a lady, 

 when speaking of fastening a veil, would speak of the elastic 

 as simply the " gum," otherwise as the " gum elastic " ; a 

 rubber ball would be a " gum ball," but a boy at ball-play 

 would say, "Throw the 'gum,'" or "Catch the 'gum.'" 

 The woid " gum " used alone would generally mean the 

 same as " rubber," that is, an india-rubber overshoe — our 

 golosh. Everyone here in Missoiu'i, and I believe througli- 

 out the States, would so understand "gum" and "gums." 

 The word belongs about as much to Philadelphia as 

 " Bantam " to Bradford. As to novelty, the expression 

 probably is quite a new one — to my critic. 



1 may note in this connection (as Americans say, oftener 

 than English folk) that if white men cut down words — as 

 in this c;ise, from " india-rubber overshoes " to " rubbers " 

 or to "gums"- — coloured folk are just as apt to reverse the 

 process. Thus gum, and rubber, and india-rubber are com- 

 bined into the odd word Gtinjer-rubber I Elastic becomes 

 ruhher-htslic. We find even the monstrosities Gunjerlaslic 

 and Gunjer-rubber-lastio ! 



Use. My careful critic has discovered an example of 

 recent and temporary' American slang in the case of this word. 

 " Just now," he s;igely writes, " a New Yorker expressing 

 liis disapproval of a person or a thing, will tell you that ' he 

 has no use for it.' " If the Saturdai/ Itevien-er had written 

 fiftj- columns he could not more thoroughly have exposed 

 his ignorance. He had written impudently enough that he 

 had been moved to explain certain terms " in the hope that 

 Mr. Proctor may be encouraged to learn something about 

 the subject before he presumes to teach." Mutaio nomine 

 de te, my critic, Fahula narratru. ^Vill English readera 

 believe that this expression, which the ignorant Saturday 

 Reviewer imagines to be "just now" coming into use "in 

 New York," has been in use certainly half a century in 

 nearly every part of the United States? It was one of the 

 first exjjressions which attracted my attention in 1873 in 

 New York and Boston ; my wife, a Missourian by bii-th, 

 re&ills it fi'om her earliest childhood ; my father-in-law 

 remembers it as familiarly in use when he was a child in 

 Virginia; and a score of persons to whom I have related 

 this excellent Saturdai/ Jievieiv joke, attest the use of the 

 expression throughout America — some of them referiing it 

 back over sixty years / 



An associated use of the word may l)e mentioned as 

 rather quaint ; it is probably quite as old as the other, 

 though my own recognition of it doss not date back more 

 than a dozen years. An American will speak of a person 

 as too absurd, or too ordinary, or too homely for any use ! 

 For example, I should be correct])- applying this Ameri- 

 canism in saying, " My critic is too ignorant, or too spiteful, 

 ' for any use.' " 



I may add, in conclusion, that although the Saturday 

 Revieioer chances — strangely enough — to repeat a truth 

 when he says that Charles Reade and Anthon\' Trollope 

 failed lamentably w-ith their American talk, he is altogether 

 mistaken — naturally enough — in comparing the mistake 

 with that of one who should mix Cockney, Yorkshire, Irish, 

 and Scotch, and use it for English. American provincial- 

 isms are nothing like so marked as this comparison would 

 suggest : moreover, Americans travel about so much, and 

 many of them are so quick at appropriating oddities of 

 expression, that even the curiously mixed talk of Joshua 

 Fullalove, and the less ol)tiusively bad American of the 

 senator, are not really so bad as they seem. They are bad 

 enough though. Yet this does not much matter, any more 

 than the very bad Irish of Thackeray's Costigan aflects our 

 enjoyment of " Pendennis." As an example of utterly 

 incorrect dialect — equally harmless, however — I might 

 mention Mr. Grant Allen's West Indian negro talk, which 

 is an odd mixture of true West Indian dialect and such 

 expressions as are met with among the coloured people of 

 the States. 



ARE SUN-SPOTS HOLLOWS? 





HP] evidence adduced by Dr. Wilson and 

 subsequently confirmed by Sir W. Herschel, 

 to show that sun-spots are saucer-shaped 

 or funnel-shaped depressions, has been 

 seriously questioned by many careful 

 observers of the sun. The latest to express 

 doubts on the subject is that zealous sun- 

 observer (I had almost said sun-worshipper) 

 the Piev. F. Howlett, some of whose admii-.ible pictures of 

 sun-spots we were allowed three years or so ago to reproduce 

 in Knowledge. He writes, in the somewhat sepulchral 

 pages of the Astronomical Society's " Monthly Notices," as 

 follows : — 



" I am desirous of placing on record some definite state- 

 ments and measurements in connection with the appearance 

 of certain symmetrically- sha|)ed solar spots, both when near 

 the centre and also when close to the limb of the sun. It 

 will be found that these measurements entirely militate 

 against the commonly received opinion that the spots are 

 to any such extent sunk in the solar surface as to jiroduce 

 always tho.se effects of pei-spective foreshortening of the 

 inner side of the penumbra (when near the limb) which 

 have been descriljed in various works on astronomy. 



" In my contention that by no means the majority of 

 spots present that funnel-like ajipearance atti'ibuted to them 

 by the Wilson hypothesis, I am sufficiently borne out both 

 by Father Perry and Mr. Ranyard. The former, after 

 paying especial attention, at my request, to this point in 

 connection with a large and unusually symmetrical spot 

 which was close to the western limb on the afternoon of 

 April 12 of this present year, wrote me thus : — ' The ques- 

 tion of the foreshortening was specially attended to, and the 

 observation showed a very sliglit excess of foreshortening on 

 the side of the penumbra nearest the sun's centre, but cer- 

 tainly not enough to give any support to Wilson's theory.' 

 Mr. Ranyard, again, in a letter of the 7th inst., reports : — 



