Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/503

 io" s. iv. NOV. is, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 417 likely the Centrifugal Railway paid a visit there too. These gardens were in existence till about 1863, when they were cut up for building land. A. H. AEKLE. Birkenhead. The Centrifugal Railway was in the Zoo- logical Gardens in West Derby Road, Liver- pool. A Mr. Atkins was the proprietor. I remember seeing the railway a great number of times between the years 1855 and 1860. I think that no one was ever injured. I never had sufficient courage to venture on the line. I regret to say that in those days I called it the Cen-tri-fu-gal Railway. THOS. WHITE. THE PIGMIES AND THE CRANES (10th S. iv. 266, 356). — Miss Agnes M. Clerke in her 'Familiar Studies in Homer,' p. 144, points out that "one of the few bits of primitive folk-lore enshrined in the ' Iliad ' relates to the wars of the cranes and the pygmies," and proceeds to give a very interesting account of the once common beliefs on this and kin- dred subjects. In an inventory of ornaments belonging to Lincoln Cathedral in 1536 mention is made of " a case of wode covered wl sylver & a fote of copor, havyng a man and a woman callyd pygmeis " (Archceoloyia,, vol. liii. p. 17). The battles between pigmies and cranes were sometimes represented on tapestry. I have met with one instance, and, I think, more than one, in my reading, but have failed to make a note thereof. There is a paper on pigmies by Sir Harry H. Johnston in The Pall Mall Magazine for February, 1902. EDWARD PEACOCK. DETECTIVES IN FICTION (10th S. iv. 307,356). —The details to which ME. YARDLEY refers are recoverable from Dunlop's' Prose Fiction. Voltaire seems to have obtained the incident from the 'Soirees Bretpnnes' of Gueulette, who had it from an Italian work, the original being "an Arabic work of the thirteenth century, entitled 'Nighiaristan.'" J. DORMER. HAIR-POWDERING CLOSETS (10th S. vi. 349) — Mr. William Andrews, in his recently published work 'At the Sign of the Barber's Pole,' says :— " In houses of any pretension was a small room aet apart for the purpose, and it was known as the powdering room. Here were fixed two curtains and the person went behind, exposing the heac only, which received its proper supply of powdei without any going on the clothes of the individua •dressed." Some of the references to powdering gowns ,nd powdering slippers in 'N. it Q.' mention a cupboard at Little Dean Hall, on the >ordersof the Forest of Dean, nearNewnham, vhich was used for that purpose. EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Koad. " NOBILE VIRTtJTIS GENUS EST PATIENTIA " 10th S. iv. 369).—See Andreas Gartner's 'Pro- verbialia Dicteria,' fol. 80 recto (ed. 1570; I lave not seen that of 1566), Nobile vincendi genus est patientia, vincit Qui patitur, Si vis vincere, disce pati. Wer gedultig ist/ der gewinnt. The same Latin lines are to be seen in ' Car- niimiit Proverbialium Loci Communes,' p. 159 (London, 1577; I have no earlier -lii I.in at hand). Both the above collections include the similar maxim, Disce pati, si vis victorum tu fore ciuis [cf. 'Sententiw Proverbiales de Moribus,' Bas. 1568, p. 30), which, with tu and victorum transposed, is in 'ProverbiaCommunia'(1480- 1495). See, above all, W. H. D. Suringar's edition of Heinrich Bebel's 'Proverbia Ger- manica' (Leyden, 1879), pp. 423, 424 of the ' Annotatio,' and, for the sources of the ' Pro- verbialia Dicteria,' the authorship of the ' Loci Communes Proverbiales,' and other points of interest, the life of Andreas Gartner in vol. viii. of the 'Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie,' with the references there given. EDWARD BENSLY. 32, Doughty Street, W.C. I have no copy at hand of the 'Disticha' of Dionysius Cato, but much suspect that these or similar lines may be found there. In the same, lib. i. 38, we find: "Maxima enirn morum semper patientia uirtus" : as I have men- tioned in my notes to Langland's 'Piers Plow- man,' C. xvi. 138. So also in my notes to Chaucer, ' Cant. Tales,' F. 774. Langland quotes a similar sentiment from the French. In ' P. Plowman,' C. xiv. 202, he has :— Ys no vertue so feyr, of value ne of profyt. As ys suffraunce souereynliche, so hit be for Codes loue. And so witnesseth the wyse, and wysseth the Frenshe— Bele vertue est sufTraunce, Ac. And again, in C. xvi. 138, "pacientes uincunt." And again, in B. x. 439, "quant oportet vient en place, il ny ad quo pati." And compare, from B. vi. 316, '* Paupertatis onus patienter ferre memento": which is quoted from Dionysius Cato, 'Disticha,' lib. i. 21. WALTEE W. SKEAT.