Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/493

 10-s. iv. NOV. is, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 407 Seagull, seagull. Sit on the strand: God help the poor sailors When they come to land, is a common Irish rhyme, and I think in many caaes too true."—P. 628. ' ASTARTE. LAWSON'S 'NEW GUINEA.'—The following memorandum will be of some interest to bibliographers of travel. Early in the seventies there appeared through Sampson Low & Co., ' Wanderings in the Interior of New Guinea,' by Capt. J. A Lawson. I read it once, deeply interested, but with some misgivings. The book was reviewed at considerable length in The Athenaeum, in the very racy tone of that period. New Guinea was then little known, and it was justifiable to suspend a final judgment on Capt. Lawson ; but the reviewer went so far as to invite his readers to look upon_ the author as a clever fictionist. A fortnight later appeared the author's protest, defying his critic in terms which the latter met with polite sarcasm. In another letter Capt. _ Lawson says : " Had it not been for tlii•_ isli of my publishers I should not take notice of your reviewer." Keviewer now asks for the tiger-skins, and cannot further discuss the subject till they are produced. Capt. Moresby appears next upon the scene, filling four columns in The Athenaeum of 29 May, 1875. He has never before heard of Capt. Lawson, although acting near Australia ana New Guinea at the very period. Lawson presently resumes, undismayed by his rival's array of facts and comparisons of dates, and protests against Capt. Moresby reflecting upon the exploits of an " explorer who has made discoveries as important as his own "; a due sense of modesty should have kept him silent, and so forth. On 4 November, 1876. The Athenaeum noticed another wonderful book of adventure (Tinsley), ' A Narrative of Travel and Sport in Burmah, Siam, and the Malay Peninsula,' by John Bradley. The reviewer—probably the same that dealt with Capt. Lawson— •was candid. "John Bradley" was prudent enough to abstain from the invitation of needless retorts from a writer who was evi- dently a past-master in sarcasm. I have just discovered that' The Wander- ing Naturalist, a Story of Adventure' <Kemington, 1880), is a third Munchausen book by the same author. Now, I have always had Capt. Lawson larking in a corner of my brain. It seemed «u if I should certainly live to learn the truth about him. It has come. I was recently chatting with a friend, who gave me some ingenious stories of his native village in Huntingdonshire— Brampton, I think. There was one oddity, unfortunately a cripple, and unable to compete fairly in life with other young men, who dabbled in books when not wandering about with a gun. Entirely self- educated, he had got as far as " Herodotus." He bethought himself to write a good book, and the product was " Wanderings in New Guinea, by Capt. John A. Lawson." • EDWARD SMITH. Putney. WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct. PIG : SWINE : HOG.—The word " pig " was known to Johnson only as meaning the young of a swine, " a young sow or boar." This is still the only sense of " pig " in many locali- ties, where "a sow and_ her pigs " marks the distinction. But in literary English now pig" is generally substituted (euphemis- tically, I suppose) for swine, sow, or hog; and even in reference to wild swine or hogs one hears of pig-sticking, and the victims referred to as " pigs.'' I have not observed any clear instance of this widened use of "pig" before the nineteenth century, and shall be glad of clear examples before 1840. While writing of this, I may also mention that in the south of Scotland the generic name of the porcine animal is "sow," of which "swine" is employed as the plural, on bhe analogy, I suppose, of cow, kine; "swine" is not there used as a singular, and hog, being applied to a sheep of a certain age, is not ivailable. It would be interesting to know low far this extends locally, and indeed to snow exactly how pig, sow, swine, hog, are distinguished in various parts of England, [n Oxford I am told that bacon-pig is applied even to an animal of 4 cwt., wnich I should consider long past the pig estate, and call a tacon-hog. But exact distinctions of this cind are often very local, or restricted to those in the trade. J. A. H. MURRAY. vol. ii. of the second edition of Southey's Life of Nelson,' small 12mo, 1814 (printed or John Murray, bookseller to the Admiralty and Board of Longitude), there is printed the ollowing:— "The Printer having a few pages of the last beet unoccupied, it occurred to the Publisher that
 * ULM AND TRAFALGAR.'—At the end of