I/O 
NATURE NOTES. 
still retain this form in their dialect, when they call bees, been ; 
shoes, shoon ; or eyes, eyen. Accordingly the Anglo-Saxon 
plural of cwice would cwicen ; and this form also Ave retain as a 
name for Triticum repens, which is called quichen or quickens in the 
north of England, in many parts of Scotland, and in Ireland ; 
in \\’orcestershire it is called quicken grass. But the name cwice 
has undergone many other changes in the course of a thousand 
years. Thus the termination has been softened from the hard 
sound of c to the soft sound of ch, and Ave get the Avord cwicJi, or 
as it is noAV spelt quitch ; and this is the name giA^en to the same 
grass in Glamorganshire and also to one or two other grasses 
AA'hich resemble it in the habit of forming underground shoots ; and 
it is one of the names giA-en to it by Gerard, the Cheshire her- 
balist, AA'ho AATOte his herbal in 1597 ; but I think that particular 
form of the AA’ord is noAV obsolete in Cheshire, if it ever existed in 
that county. The name quitch has, in many places, been ren- 
dered less broad and rough by the pronunciation couch or couch 
grass, Avhich is the name giA'en to Triticum repens in both agricul- 
tural and botanical books. It likeAvise goes by the name of couch 
in Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Kent, Middlesex, York- 
shire, and WarAA’ickshire. In South Buckinghamshire, Glouces- 
tershire, Dorsetshire and Sussex couch sometimes becomes cooch. 
But besides the Anglo-Saxon cwic being altered in its ter- 
mination to form the AA’ords I haA'e mentioned, it has suffered 
eA'en more changes in its initial letter. There is a great ten- 
denc59 in many dialects, to soften the sound of cav or q into tAV, 
and Ave consequently find quitch changed into twitch. This form 
of the Avord, and twitch grass have a remarkably Avide range. 
They are names given to Triticum repens, but perhaps more 
especially to another creeping grass, Agrostis vulgaris, in Bed- 
fordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cumberland, Derbyshire, 
Leicestershire, Essex, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, 
Somersetshire and Worcestershire. In some parts of Lincoln- 
shire it is pronounced twike. 
There is another A’ery frequent peculiarity of local pronuncia- 
tion, namely, to put an s before certain letters at the beginning of 
AAmrds. Thus, in Cheshire, AA^e say sprise for prise, in the sense 
of forcing anything open. There is also a bird Avhich AA'e call 
spit-sparroAA' — that is, pit-sparroAA’ — because it haunts the edges 
of pits, and generally builds its nest in the rough grass that groAvs 
round them. In this manner by the addition of the letter s, 
quitch has become squitch in many counties, namely, Bucking- 
hamshire, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, 
Shropshire, WarAvickshire, Worcestershire, and in parts of Ire- 
land. And in Oxfordshire, Shropshire, the AA^est of England 
generally, and in Cheshire, squitch is altered, shortened perhaps, 
into scutch ; or our Avord scutch may haAm been formed from cooch 
by the addition of an initial s. 
I haA'e thus traced our Cheshire scutch through many curious 
changes from the Anglo-Saxon AA'ord cwic. But cwic has under- 
