Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/331

 io s. xii. OCT. 2, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

271

and-coop " a corruption of " hide-and- whoop " ? the game really being hide, and whoop, and seek. J. BROWN.

88, St. Leonard's Road, Hove.

Hogo. An intoxicating drink. Is this

SDssibly an error for " Hogan " ? See avies's ' Supplementary English Glossary,' wherein reference is made to 5 S. i. 14.

Lurky. This should mean wrinkled. In ' The Destruction of Troy,' 1. 3029, it is said of Helen's forehead :

NowJ>er lynes ne lerk&s but full lell streght. Allan Ramsay has

Some too to keep their skin frae lirkes.

H. P. L.

Ice cream. If Mrs. Alexander Hamilton made the remark attributed to her, she was mistaken. Mrs. Hamilton was, I think, a daughter of General Philip Schuyler, and could hardly have been born before 1750. (Absence from Boston prevents my giving the exact date.) But ice cream was known in the American colonies at least as early as 1744. On 19 May of that year Governor Thomas Bladen of Maryland entertained at dinner some commissioners who had been appointed by Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to treat with the Iroquois or Six Nations of Indians in reference to certain lands. The secretary of the Virginia commissioners was William Black, a Scotch- man by birth, who at that time had appa- rently not long been in this country. In his ' Journal,' printed in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, ii. 126, Black thus describes the dinner :

" Then the scene was chang'd to a dining room, where you saw a plain proof of the great plenty of the country, a table in the most resplendent manner set out with great variety of dishes, all serv'd up in the most elegant way, after which came a dessert no less curioifs ; among the rarities of which it was compos'd was some fine ice cream, which, with the strawberries and milk, eat most deliciously."

It is to be remembered that " iced cream " was the earlier term, and that this dish was advertised in The London Gazette in 1688 (see the ' N.E.D.'). Ice cream was doubtless introduced into America from England.

ALBERT MATTHEWS.

Jefferson, N.H.

Jubator = Myrmacophaga jubata. See Wood's ' Natural History,' Mammalia, p. 772 (Routledge, 1869). There was a specimen at the Zoo in 1853, and special omnibuses ran to visit it. Punch represents a bene- volent old lady sending it some new-laid ants' eggs. W. SCARGILL.

BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES (10 S. xii. 106, 158, 195). Cowper in his own quietly observant way was deeply interested in the possibilities of the balloon. In 'one of his letters he says he has been reading Lunardi on the engrossing topic of the hour, and expresses a favourable opinion on the Italian's good sense and judgment. Writing to William Unwin on 18 Dec., 1784, he conjures up an engaging picture of "a balloon under sail, with a philosopher or two on board," adding, however, that he would hesitate at that season of the year to expose himself " for any length of time to the rigour of the upper regions." A year earlier, on 29 Sept., 1783, in a letter to the same confidential correspondent, he had freely indulged his playful fancy on the subject in the following terms :

"I am quite charmed with the discovery. Is it not possible (do you suppose) to convey such a quantity of inflammable air into the stomach and abdomen, that the philosopher, no longer gravitating to a centre, shall ascend by his own comparative levity, and never stop till he has reached the medium exactly in equilibria with himself? May he not, by the help of a pasteboard rudder attached to his posteriors, steer himself in that purer element with ease, and again, by a slow and gradual discharge of his aerial contents, recover his former tendency to the earth, and descend without the smallest danger

or inconvenience? The pennce non homini data*

are likely to be less regretted than they were ; and perhaps a flight of academicians and a covey of fine ladies may be no uncommon spectacle in the next generation, A letter which appeared in the public prints last week convinces me, that the learned are not without hopes of some such improvement upon this discovery. The author suggests many good consequences that may result from a course of experiments upon this machine, and amongst others, that it may be of use in ascertaining the shape of continents and islands, and the face of wide extended and far distant countries : an end not to be hoped for, unless, by these means of extraordinary elevation, the human prospect may be immensely enlarged, and the philosopher, exalted to the skies, attain a view of the whole hemisphere at once. But whether he is to ascend by the mere inflation of his person, as hinted above, or whether in a sort of band-box, supported upon balloons, is not yet apparent."

The poets' " band-box supported upon balloons " is a fairly creditable prophetic flight, and the whole passage, of which it forms the striking consummation, seems well worthy of reproduction in these days of aerial achievement. THOMAS BAYNE.

In Gent. Mag. for 1784, p. 873, there is a list of about thirty voyages with times and particulars of each flight, from 21 Nov.,

1783, to 12 Nov., 1784. On 19 Sept.,

1784, a balloon is said to have travelled 150 miles in 6h. 40m.