114 



Letter to the Editor. 



root must, I imagine, be the Norse tryggr, true, safe : and it can 

 not, I think, have anything to do with the old German word tre/c/ian, 

 to draw, or the modern English word trigger, with both of which 

 one might, perhaps, at first sight have been somewhat inclined to 

 connect it. 



Whicker, v. n. Halliwell mentions this word as used in the 

 "West of England with the signification of to neigh. I am inclined 

 to thipk, however, that in its Wiltshire use, it rather means to whinny 

 as distinguished from neighing. It is, no doubt, an example of 

 onomatopoeia, and so far cognate to " nucker 99 or " knucker/' which 

 is used with this same signification in Norfolk, Kent, Sussex, and 

 some other counties. 



Wingfield House, 

 Near Trowbridge, 



2Qtk August, 1884. 



Dear Me. Smith, 



As you have been kind enough to make room in the Devizes Museum 

 for the flint antiquities and bones found by my husband, my son, and myself in 

 the bone cavern at Mentone, it has struck me you might like to have some 

 description of the spot, and of the circumstances under which these relics were 

 discovered. 



The caves are situated little more than a mile from Mentone, in a magnificent 

 headland of red stone, called in the patois of the country the Baousse Baousse 

 (red rocks), and are vast wedge-shaped clefts, piercing far back into the moun- 

 tains. They open on a broad ledge about 40ft. above the beautiful sparkling 

 Mediterranean ; where the walls of stone unite far overhead they are fringed 

 with hanging fronds of the maidenhair fern, and as we may believe that primaeval 

 man had, like ourselves, a heart that could be cheered by sunshine and gladdened 

 by beauty, nowhere could he have chosen a spot more delightful, or from its 

 situation more secure from the attacks of the wild beasts with which the forest- 

 covered valleys must have abounded. 



After passing the last villa on the shore of the east bay at Mentone, with its 

 garden of tropical plants, you continue to skirt the sea shore by a somewhat rugged 

 road, once the Via Julia of the Romans, now principally used by the stone carts 



