Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/21

 io* s. ii. JULY 2, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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sometimes to-day wear more ramie on our backs than was bargained for with our tailors. In 1884 it was being used the world over, both Indian ramie and China ramie, in the manufacture of textile fabrics. Writing in the ficononiiste Franrais in the beginning of 1884, M. Gaston Sencier notes its introduction in the south of France, and describes it as

"a lively plant which may be cut several times in a year, and which it is asserted may attain the age of a hundred years. The textile fibre of it constitutes the bark of the plant, and is impregnated with a viscous matter tolerably abundant in it. While cutting it twice a year, we are told, the Algerian climate will furnish 80 tons of green stalks from a hectare (2i acres). Half of this amount consists of leaves used as fodder for cattle and material for paper pulp. The remaining 40 tons consists of the leafless stalk, and contains 10 per cent., i.e., four tons, of raw fibrous matter. The removal of the gern) in it and cleaning take away another half, so that the hectare nets two tons of available textile. It takes three years ere a ramie plantation s in full bearing. It may be propagated by seed, sprigs, &c., but the best way is to cut up the root and

plant the fragments In 1870 the Government of

British India offered to the inventor of the best machine for decorticating green ramie a premium of 5.000/., but no inventor obtained the prize."

See also La fiamie, 1 January, 1884 ; the Boletin del Departmento de Agricultures of Buenos Ay res (an article on 'Ramie in the Argentine Republic,' by Don Luis Maria Utor, January or February, 1884); a lecture de- livered at the Society of Arts by Dr. Forbes Watson on 'The Rheea Fibre' on 12 Dec 1883 (William Trounce, 10, Gough Square! Fleet Street) ; and Wool and Textile Fabrics, 12 Jan., 2 and 16 Feb., and 8 March, 1884. The etymology of " rheea" is desirable.

J. HOLDEN MAcMlCHAEL.

This word is not provincial, neither does it belong to Lancashire. It is duly entered in the 'N.E.D.' There is an account of it in meria.' -W. C. B.
 * Chambers's Encyclopaedia ' under ' Bceh-

This is the name, in various Eastern lan- guages, of a kind of nettle, the bark of which furnishes a fine and strong thread, now used as a substitute for flax. In Malay and Javanese it is pronounced rami, in Sundanese rameh. Crawfurd's 4 Malay Dictionary/ 1852, defines it as "a nettle of which cordage is made." JAMES PLATT, Jun.

Ramie is rhea fibre, the produce of Bceh- mena myea. See Watt's ' Dictionary of the Economic Products of India,' vol. i. p. 468.

I. B. B.

[DR. FOKSHAW, I. C. G., MR. WALTER B. KINCS- i"Ki>, the REV. C. S. WARD, and other corre- spondents are thanked for replies.]

A WELL-KNOWN EPITAPH (10 th S. i. 444). The Roman inscription quoted is given in facsimile in Hiibner's 'Exempla Scripture Epigraphicse,' 1130, p. 404. The peculiarity of this inscription is that " vo6iscum " is spelt "voviscum," as given by MR. HORTON SMITH. HERBERT A. STRONG.

"ALIAS" IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVEN- TEENTH CENTURIES (9 th S. xii. 190, 277). BEACON may be interested in the following case of double surnames occurring in the parish registers and wills of a family in Guildford to whom my ancestors were; related. In 1560, in the parish register of Holy Trinity, is to be seen the entrv " John Gilbertsonne alias Derricke " ; and as the family remained in Guildford there are seventy entries in this one parish register of the Gilbertsonne alias Derricke family. The last entry written in this way was in 1685. The wills of the various members of the family from 1563 to 1680 are also carefully made in the same form. The use of this- double surname might be understood by some intermarriage with a foreign family, such as a Flemish immigrant of the name of Derricke ; but why it was so carefully con- tinued for 120 years is not easy to compre- hend. DAVID WILLIAMSON.

WHITE TURBARY (10 th S. i. 310). As no- one has answered the query of W. E. S., I should advise him to submit a characteristic specimen of the plant to some botanist of his acquaintance, who would give him its scientific name. Or if he will send me such a specimen to the address given below, I will get it identified for him. I see that the name dewon is among a list of words given in Wright's 'Dialect Dictionary 3 respecting which information is desired.

JOSEPH A. MARTINDALE.

Staveley, Kendal.

FRANCE AND CIVILIZATION (10 th S. i. 448). I may mention two curious plates or tablets on the stairs of the Museum at Boulogne-sur- Mer, dated 1572, one recording that " England and France together can conquer the world, and the other '* That England and France have more common sense than all the world," written no doubt by some enthusiastic Eng- lishman during a temporary peace between, the many wars of that period.

J. DUNNINGTON JEFFERSON.

BUNNEY (10 th S. i. 489). Duly given in the ' Eng. Dial. Diet.,' but without an etymology. * It not only means a chine, but a culvert, or conduit for water. The final -y in such words often arises from the French suffix - The