Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/277

 io s. ii. SEPT. IT, ISM.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

225.

WhewelTa ' History of the Inductive Sciences.'

Humboldt's ' Cosmos,' Sabine's translation ; also translation by E. C. Otte, B. H. Paul, and W. S. Dallas (London, Bell *fc Sons, 1899- 1901).

Rouse Ball (London, 1893).
 * An Essay on' Newton's Principia,' by W. W.

cols. 188-95 (Paris, 1877).
 * Nouvelle Biographie Gene'rale,' tome xxiii.

'Biographie Universelle,' tome xviii. pp. 376-81 (Paris, 1857).

and Charts in the British Museum ' (A-K), cols. 1733-4 (London, 1885).
 * Catalogue of the Printed Maps, Plans,

Original Letters from Dr. E. Halley, in the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum. II. PORTRAITS.

'Catalogue of a Choice Collection of Engravings,' p. 15, item 263 (Maggs Bros., 109, Strand, W.C., December, 1903). III. GENEALOGY.

The letter from Dr. E. Halley to John Anstis, Esq., Garter King-at-Arms (cited 9 th S. xii. 266), has no bearing whatever upon the history of the Halley family. The original, dated at Greenwich 16 May, 1721, is

S-eserved amon^ the Stowe MSS., British useum, 749, folio 158. Mr. Ralph J. Beevor, M.A., has obliged me with a copy thereof.

I should have stated at 9 th S. xi. 366 that Dr. Halley's surname takes the three forms Hally (not Haly), Haley, and Halley in Aubrey's ' Brief Lives,' Clark, i. 282-3 (Oxford, 1898).

A record agent in London from whom I have not previously received information sends this item :

" In a dusty, ancient ' Muster- Roll ' of H.M. ships, eighteenth century, titled as follows: 'Records of Admiralty : Muster-Book, v. No. 340, Removed from the Pavilion at Deptlord in 1846, d. d. to the London Record Office,' in manuscript, on the second page of the book (not numbered in paging), under the ship's name Bristol, occurs : ' O.F. 466, Edm d

Halley, Surgeon, 7 th Feb., 1740, Portsmouth',' with i D.D. marked through. I am unable to ide

the letters D.D. marked through, reconcile this entry with the idea that he lived till 8 Aug., 1740 [see ante^. 881. But of course it is my duty simply to copy the entry as it stands plainly in the Roll-call report, which being inter- preted from the nautical phrase signifies distinctly he was Discharged & (?) Dead, on 7 Feb., 1740, at Portsmouth, where the vessel was lying at that time for several months. Now it is certain that from 1 Jan. to 28 February the Bristol was in 1741 at Kingston, Jamaica ! So it must mean 1740 (O.S.)." IV. MISCELLANEOUS.

'N. & Q.,' 9 th S. xii. 127 ; 10 th S. i. 86, 152, 289; ii. 88, 177.

Intermedia ire, xlviii. 557 ; xlix. 26.

EUGENE FAIRFIELD MAC PIKE.

Chicago, U.S.

" ELECTRON." A recent application of the word "electron" to a new sense, not yet recorded in the * Oxford Historical English Dictionary,' may perhaps deserve to be enshrined in * N. & Q.' :

" J. J. Thomson has demonstrated the existence of particles more minute than anything previously known to science. The mass of each is about a 1000th part of that of a hydrogen atom. These particles, which were termed by their discoverer Corpuscles,' are more commonly spoken of as Electrons, the particle thus being identified with the charge which it carries." ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' vol. xxx. p. 452 (the sixth supplementary volume of 1902).

Cf. also Sir Oliver Lodge's Romanes Lecture, ' Modern Views on Matter,' Oxford, 1903.

H. KREBS.

ROGER MORTIMER'S ESCAPE. According to the * D.N.B.,' which corrects a statement of Murimuth that this event occurred in 1323, "the night chosen was the Feast of : St. Peter ad Vincula, 1324." But in a commis- sion sent into Wales, and dated 6 August,. 17 Edward II., which surely must have been 1323, Roger Mortimer is said to have "escaped from the Tower lately by night" (' Calendar of Patent Rolls, 17 Edward II.,' mem. 17, quoted on p. 335 in the volume recently issued by the Record Commissioners). CHARLES SWYNNERTON.

"MOCASSIN": ITS PRONUNCIATION. In my schooldays we called this mocdssin, a pro- nunciation which, I am told, youthful devotees of Fenimore Cooper still prefer. Our dictionaries only admit the pronuncia- tion mdcassin, yet I should not dismiss the other as a mere blunder. Rather am I led to- the conclusion that both pronunciations are old, from the fact that in various North American Indian dialects, in which the term occurs, there is the same double stress as in English. Speaking generally, I find the Eastern Algonquins accent the penultimate, the Northern Algonquins the antepenulti- mate. To the Easterns belonged those New England tribes with whom our ancestors first came into contact, and the form they used was mokussin. The Abenakis, who said rnktzen, and the Micmacs, who said nikusun, also belonged to this Eastern stock. On the- other hand, the Odjibwas, in Canada, of the Northern branch, say mdkisin. I do not know how the Southern Algonquins, or Virginians,, pronounced their mockasin. It would throw- fight on this subject if any reader can refer to passages in the obscure American poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries containing this word. I Know of none, having hitherto failed to trace it back