Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/215

 10'" S. III. MARCH 4, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

175

GOLD v. SILVER (10 th S. iii. 108). As the total quantities of gold and silver which exist can only be vaguely estimated, this query is, I think, not answerable. Moreover, it is not clear what is meant by relative "conven- tional" value. If this means the legal ratio, the available quantities, of course, do not affect this in monometallic gold currencies with silver token coins. If, however, the market ratio is meant, then there does not appear to have been so marked a change in the ratios of the annual outputs of the two metals as will account for the appreciation of gold from 1 : 15 or 16 to 1 : 35 within a few decades, though doubtless the cumulative effect of the great preponderance of silver produced is partly responsible for this.

J. DORMER.

Prof. Stanley Jevons's volume on ' Money and the Mechanism of Exchange ' (Inter- national Scientific Series) is an able exami- nation of this and kindred questions. In the chapter on 'The Battle of the Standards' (thirteenth edition, p. 143) the learned econo- mist writes :

"The amount of supply and amount of demand of both the precious metals depend upon a number of accidents, changes, or legislative decisions,

which cannot be in any way predicted That any

great rise' will really happen in the purchasing power of gold is wholly a matter of speculation." FRANCIS P. MARCH AX T.

Streatham Common.

PATENT MEDICINES (10 th S. iii. 86). I think that if C. C. B. considers the question, he will see that this phrase may be more appro- priately treated in the ' N.E.D.' under " medicine," along with other equivalent phrases, "proprietary medicine" and the like. If C. C. B. does not know the schedule to statute 52 George III. c. 150, which deals with the question, he may be interested in glancing over it. Q. V.

I wish scholars and the general public would help all medici to get the Government to abolish the useless \^d. stamp on wrongly called patent medicines. I would abolish all patents, providing a reward fund for proved meritorious inventors, not improvers of inventions. Copyright is different, since two men cannot write the same book, but may hit upon the same mechanical device.

T. W.

CLOCKS STOPPED AT DEATH (10 th S. iii. 124). In the year 1878 I was staying in the neighbourhood of Normanton Park, Rutland- shire, and went over the house, which con- tains a number of interesting relics of the kings and queens of England which have

from time to time passed into the hands of the hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain. Among them 'is a grandfather clock, which was then on the principal staircase, to which there is attached a brass plate, stating that it had been the private property of his Majesty William IV., and stood in the- sovereign's private room in the House of Lords, and was kept in order and regularly wound by the king's own clockmaker, and not the man employed by the Office of Works to regulate the other clocks in the two Houses of Parliament. The clock stopped at the exact moment his Majesty expired, and so remained.

HENRY AUGUSTUS JOHNSTON.

Perhaps it will interest folk-lorists to know- that in my native province (Duchy of Anhalt) the custom still prevails of stopping the clocks as soon as a death occurs in a house. DR. G. KRUEGER.

Berlin. [The name ante, p. 125, should be Reid, not " Reed."J

CLERGYMAN AS CITY COUNCILLOR (10 th S. iii. 24, 134). MR. DIXON is wrong in sup- posing that there is any error in regard to the statement as to the election of the Rev. Percival Clementi-Smith as a member of the Court of Common Council. He overlooks the fact that the Municipal Corporations Act of 1882, which he quotes, does not apply to the City of London, but only to such cities and towns as are enumerated in the schedule annexed to the Act of 1835.

EDWARD M. BORRAJO.

The Library, Guildhall, E.C.

The Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, does not apply to the City of London (see sec. 6 of that Act, and Schedules A and B to- the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835), nor apparently to the metropolitan boroughs created by the London Government Act, 1899. D- C. I.

Two members of the Bradford City Council are ministers. These are the Rev. Archibald Duff, D.D., LL.D., and the Rev. R. Roberts. Both are Congregationalists.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D.

SAXTON FAMILY OF SAXTON, co. YORK (10 th S. iii. 129). Twenty-one years ago PROF. SKEAT remarked (6 th S. x. 110) that the etymology of place-names was most slippery and difficult, and that he had no faith in three-quarters of the explanations which were so lavishly offered. Since then, thanks to PROF. SKEAT himself, Mr. W. H. Duignan, and one or two other scholars, some progress has been made in our know-