Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/383

. ir. OCT. is, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the right hand raised, the other with the left. The bed is supported by four feet, which bear the Isis head, hawk's head, dog's head, and a human head, the symbols of the four healing divinities, Isis, Osiris, Anubis, and Horus. Other hieroglyphics on a talisman, bearing similar representations, are men- tioned, and upon other mummies, where standing figures touch the feet, the head, the sides, or the thighs, and many other magnetic -actions are represented ; these are reproduced in Montfaucon and in Denon's 'Voyage d'Egypte.'

These scenes do not stand alone. Figures occur on the amulets or charms know as "Abraxas," all more or less manifesting an -acquaintance with magnetism. The priest with the dog's head or mask occurs repeatedly, with his hands variously placed on the sup- posed patient. Some of these figures are given by Montfaucon. In one of them the masked figure places one hand on the feet, the other on the head of the patient ; in -a second, one hand is laid upon the stomach, the other upon the head ; in a third the hands are upon the loins ; in a fourth the hands are placed upon the thighs, and the eyes of the operator fixed upon the patient's counte- nance. All these representations were in- volved in mystery till magnetism was rediscovered by Frederick Anthony Mesmer.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D. Baltimore House, Bradford.

^ DISPROPORTION OF SEXES (10 th S. ii. 209). Statistics from many sources show that the rule is for 105 boys to be born for 100 girls. Boys, however, die more easily during birth and early childhood ; hence at a nubile age there are found to be 100 women to 95 men, which proportion is soon lowered as the result of accidents, of enlistment in the navy and army, and of the absence of the seafaring classes from home. This inquiry has a per- tinent bearing upon the physiological basis of such Protectorate laws as that for the .enforcement of continence (1650).

MEDIC ULUS.

44 SUN AND ANCHOR " INN (10 th S. i. 504 ; ii. 92, 132). This sign has the appearance of having been originally either the "Sun" or the " Anchor " alone, receiving the addition of one or the other on the incoming of a new tenant, who for old association's sake wished to preserve the memory of his former cogni- sance. A retired seafaring landlord would naturally adopt such a sign as that of the "Ship," the "Anchor," &c., not only as a matter of fancy on his own part, but to attract the custom of mariners who were on

the look-out for a comfortable hostelry during their sojurn ashore. The sign frequently occurs as the ''Anchor and Cable," or the "Rope and Anchor," when it doubtless appertained to the badge of the Admiralty, and was represented with a piece of cable twined round the stem. In the scarce print of Fish Street Hill and the Monument, in which the signs are distinctly affixed to the houses, the "Anchor and Cable" is the fourth house from the Monument towards East- cheap. The "Anchor and Gun" at Wool- wich was well known to the Custom-House officers as a receiving place for smuggled goods (see London Journal, 2 September, 1721). And when the old Navy Office stood in Crutched Friars and Seething Lane there was a "Blue Anchor" close by. And so to-day many signs of the " Anchor " and "Blue Anchor" will be found in the neigh- bourhood of the parts where those engaged in the river traffic find it necessary to fix their residence.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

MINERAL WELLS, STREATHAM (10 th S. ii. 228). Lewis, in his ' Topographical Dic- tionary of England,' 1831, remarks :

"Among the attractions is a mineral spring, which was discovered in 1660, and is still held in esteem, being highly efficacious in scorbutic erup- tions, and in many other cases."

The Surrey Magazine, 1902, says :

the waters of which were noted in the eighteen ti century, for we read that in 1701, during the summer, there was a concert at the Wells, and Streatham was alive with a gay and frivolous crowd of elegant ladies of all ranks, while the bewigged male frequenters of the Wells, and escorts of the fair dames, drank their nasty draughts, discussing the while the late ousting of the Whigs in the House of Commons and the death of the exiled James II. And in the Pott Boy newspaper for June 8th, 1717, we find the following advertisement : ' The true Streatham waters fresh every morning, only at Child's Coffee House in St. Paul's Church- yard, the Garter Coffee House, behind the Royal Exchange. Whoever buys it at any other place will be imposed upon. N.B. All gentlemen and ladies may find good entertainment at the Wells aforesaid by Thomas Lambert."

Assemblies were held here so late as 1755. The memory of the wells survives in the name of Wells Lane.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

At the bottom of Wells Lane, on Lime Common, lie the Streatham Wells, a saline spring, now in little repute. The original wells were near the house still called Well House. Aubrey gives a quaint account of them :