Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/623

. JUNE so, 1906.) NOTES AND QUERIES.

515

Latin spellings into French words, much as if we were to express the word reason by the spelling ration !

These mischievous meddlers did a good deal of harm. They wrote debte instead oj dette ; they wrote rhyme (why not rhythme* at once 1) instead of rime ; they wrote abhominable instead of abominable, owing to a false etymology which was so absurd that even the general public refused to swallow it ; and so on. Very queer was their notion that it was " scientific" to use sc for s in words like scythe, scite, scituate, scituation, and scent. Scite and its derivatives happily died, but the foolish scythe and scent are with us still. Surely we are right in protesting against such folly.

The spelling rime or ryme was universal until the coming of pedantry. It is the spelling of Chaucer's time, arid occurs in Palsgrave, Cotgrave 1, and Shakespeare. Perhaps it first appears as rime in the
 * Ormulum,' 1. 11,248, written about 1200.

When I am wrong, my chief desire is to admit it as fully as possible. And I find that I was quite wrong as to the origin of this word when I referred it to the A.-S. rlm t number. I corrected this in 1901, in the new edition of my ' Concise Dictionary.' The word is really of Romance origin, from the old French rime (cf. Ital., Span., and Port. rima). And it is now believed that this O.F. rime was really developed, in the twelfth century, from the Latin accusative rhythmum, and is ultimately of Greek origin. See Hatzfeld, Kluge, and Franck.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

From the tenor of his question SENEX seems still to have the long since exploded notion that our spelling shows the history of our mother-tongue. It does so only to the most expert experts, and they could do without it. The ue added to " tong " was a French scribe's silly addition. Who but an expert would know the derivation of " age " (from cetaticum) from the spelling? See the * Oxford English Dictionary.' How much prettier "rime" looks than "rhyme" !

R. T.

"Ross OF JERICHO" (10 th S. v. 229, 272, 430). Since I wrote on this subject (ante, p. 430) my attention has been drawn to the dried plant sold in London at the modest price of Is. or even lO^d. as the semper viva

of rime) is of later date, and differently pro- nounced. It occurs as rithmes near the end of section 9 of Howell's 'Instructions for Foreign Travel' (1642).
 * The " learned " word rhythm (though a doublet

or rose of Jericho. Finding it not to corre- spond with the description of the traditional plant as given by the botanists, I carried the subject to Kew, in order to obtain unim- peachable information at the Herbarium, the fountain of botanical knowledge. That which I there learnt from the courteous Professor, and from the books to which he referred me, may not be superfluously noted in 'N, & Q.' for the benefit of any reader whose inquiries may tend in the same direction.

The plant sold in London is the Selaginella involvens (i.e t rolled up), thus defined on account of there being many species. It is not the rose of Jericho recognized by botanists ; is in form totally unlike the accepted plant, viz., the Anastatica hiero- chuntina ; is not, like the latter, found in Syria or Palestine, but lives in China and Japan, and probably for that reason is more readily brought to London. The only like- ness between the plants is that when perfectly dried both have the marvellous hygroscopic property, or that of reviving under the influence of moisture. Their full scientific descriptions and figures are found in the * Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening,' by George Nicholson, Curator of Kew Gar- dens, 1887. At present, without repeating technical terms, it may be said that Selaginella involvens in the dry state has the appearance of a ball, perhaps four inches in diameter, formed of dried, rolled-up. mosslike fronds, and this when laid in water (on a plate) slowly expands in many toothed or mosslike fronds, overlying one another, and assuming a good green colour. Fully expanded, the plant is nearly circular, in diameter about ten inches, having some resemblance to a small ornamental centre Cl flower " as moulded by ceiling-plasterers.

On the other hand, the Anastatica hiero- chuntina (i.e., Resurrection plant of Jericho) is a little plant growing upright, though not higher than six inches, putting forth branch lets with small ovate leaves and a daisy-like flower, After the plant has flowered the leaves fall off; the branchlets become dry, hard, and ligneous, rise up wards, and bend inwards, forming as it were a cup or small wicker-like basket four inches in diameter some much smaller which con- tains the seed of the plant. This cup becomes detached, is blown about the desert, and has been imagined to represent the 'rolling thing before the whirlwind" used as a simile by Isaiah (xvii. 13). I have not seen the cup or ball expanded by moisture,

t read that the branchlets unfur}