392 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



JONE 29, 1883. 



gender of tlie Frt'iicli hcte was made masculine. It is an 

 old Joke that our gallant neighbours make the unoonipjli- 

 raentary word feminine. I happen to reiiiomhor thinking 

 of this as I wrote, and rather carefully penning the words 

 betes noires. Yet many to whom French is nearly as fami- 

 liar as English are occasionally loose in the matter of 

 genders. Witness Charles Reade, and the fun he made of 

 the anonymuncules of the press, who, laboriously turning 

 over the pages of a French dictionary, corrected him for 

 two or three such slips in a language of which he had for- 

 gotten more than probably the lot of them ever knew 

 (which is not saying he had forgotten very much either). 



I AM asked by a correspondent, who takes great (and 

 effective) interest in philological questions, to quote the 

 passage where Roade uses the word anonymuncule. He 

 has used it rather freely ; but I think he first defined it in 

 a letter to the editor of the Daily (llobe, Toronto, in 

 which also he defined the criticaster, the sham-sample 

 swindler, the prurient prude, and other creatures, studied 

 under the heading " Literary Zoology." Here is his ac- 

 count of " True Anonymuncule " : — 



Tliis little creature must not be confounded with the anonymous 

 ■writers who supply naiTatives of current events, and discuss public 

 measures with freedom, but deal largely in generalities, and very 

 little in personalities. These are the working bees, that gather 

 honey for the public. Eeade's anonymuncule is no great producer. 

 He can do Uttle but sting. He is of two kinds — the anonymous 

 Ietter-^^■riter, pest of families, and the anonymous literary detractor, 

 pest of the fuie arts. Both varieties have this essential trait in 

 common — they abuse the shelter and the obscurity of the 

 anonymous. The literary anonymuncule often abuses it doubly — 

 he belies his superior in one organ of criticism, then flies to another, 

 and says the same thing in other words. Then the duped public 

 believes that two disinterested judges have condemned its favourite, 

 whereas the poor editors are only a couple of unguarded puppets, 

 pulled by one unscrupulous anonymuncule raging with literary 

 envy. 



Suffering also, I imagine, under the sense that let him spit 

 venom as he may, more remains than the anonymuncule 

 can ever get rid of. Imagine, in this aspect, the hopeless 

 condition of those whom we are apt to despise instead of 

 pitying, as we should. What a sad and singular life, for 

 instance, a skunk's must be ! 



Mr. J. Charles Kinc;, engineer, sends us his pamphlet 

 suggesting a land junction between Great Britain and 

 Ireland by a tunnel connecting Antrim and the Mull of 

 Cantire. We fear to discuss the subject, lest we should 

 be told that there is imminent danger to our tottering 

 country in a tunnel so situate. One wonders what our 

 kindred in America and Australia think of these fears % 

 It used to be — 



Come the three comers of the world in arms. 

 And we shall shock them. 



It is some comfort to reflect that only about YTjVijth (or, to 

 be more precise, xo'a i^^) '^^ ^^^ blood of the chief warrior 

 who thinks England efiete is English — or rather, is of that 

 complex mixture of Norman, Scottish, English, French, 

 German, and Italian blood, which attained its fullest 

 development in James, known as the First of England and 

 the Si.\;th of Scotland, — but to his familiars by a less 

 dignified title. 



By the way, what were, in Shakespeare's time (or 

 John's, if the saying was meant for the earlier date), the 

 " three corners " of the world 1 



by a correspondent, I came across the following, under the 

 word " Almanac," which is interesting in connection with 

 my views respecting the Great Pyramid. 



Kusebius, De Prtcp. Evangel, iii. 4, quotes Porphyrias as to the 

 Egy])tian belief in astrology, in horoscopes, and so-called lords of 

 tlu! ascendant, whose names are given in the ahnenicbiakd (^Iv ro7r 

 <i\/iti'(Xi'»i:o7!,), with their various powers to cure diseases, their 

 risings and settings, and their presages of things future. 



Sever.vl correspondents have asked me, by the way, 

 since that book appeared, whether I have noticed that 

 several eminent Egyptologists assert very positively that 

 the Great Pyramid was meant for a tomb, and a tomb 

 only. I know it, and knew it before. They give abun- 

 dant evidence in favour of the first part of their proposi- 

 tions, but I have never seen a line of evidence or of 

 reasoning in favour of the second ; so that to my mind 

 this part (namely, the soZe/y-tombic theory) seems to me as 

 illogical as the solelytemple theory, the solely-stone-bible 

 theory, the solely-astronomical-observatory theory, and 

 others, which are disproved by facts. Only those familiar 

 with the difficulties and niceties of astronomical observa- 

 tion can know how certainly the Great Pyramid is shown 

 to have been an astronomical observatory, whatever else it 

 was ; yet it would be utterly illogical to reject on that 

 account the evidence which proves that the building was 

 meant to be a tomb also. 



Looking over some early proof sheets of the Philo- 

 logical Society's new English Dictionary, kindly sent me 



A Long-lived Lamp. — A contemporary states, on the 

 authority of the Edison Co., that one of the B (eight- 

 candle) lamps used in the Strasburg station installation 

 has been burning over 5,000 hours. The same source also 

 states that the company's manager intends to make a series 

 of experiments with this lamp, and to publish the results. 



An extensive bed of superior red marl, 64 yds. deep, has 

 been recently discovered at Ruabon, and with it Messrs. 

 Monk & Newell, of Liverpool, are forthwith commencing 

 the manufacture of terra-cotta, <fec., upon a large scale, the 

 manager of the Penybout Works — the originator of Ruabon 

 " deep-red terracotta " — undertaking the practical manage- 

 ment of the works. 



The following is the estimated railway mileage of the 

 world, Jan. 1, 1883 :— United States, 113,0013 miles; 

 Europe, 109,000 ; Asia, 8,000; South America, 7,000; 

 Canada, 8,.500 ; Australia, 3,200 ; Africa, 2,200 ; Mexico, 

 2,100. Grand total, 253,000 miles. These figm-es are not 

 claimed to be exact. It is absolutely impossible to obtain 

 official returns for the same period within a year or two 

 after date, and so it is necessary to use the latest available 

 statement, and add the probable increase since that time. 



South American Timber. — Some investigations by M. 

 Thanneur show that South America is rich in woods for 

 engineering purposes. The yandubay is exceedingly hard 

 and durable ; the couroupay is also very hard and rich in 

 tannin. The quebracho is, however, more interesting than 

 any, and grows abundantly in the forest of La Plata and 

 Brazil. It resembles oak in the trunk, and is used for 

 railway-sleepers, telegraph-poles, piles, and so on. It is 

 heavier than water, its specific gravity varying between 

 1-203 and 1-333. The colour at first is reddish, like ma- 

 hogany, but grows darker with time Being rich in tannin, 

 it is employed for tanning leather in Brazil, and has 

 recently been introduced for that purpose into France. 

 A mixture of one-third of powdered quebracho and two- 

 thirds of ordinary tan gives good results. — Engineering. 



