Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/142

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vn. F KB. o, 1907.

for independent verification on my part. The occasion was a private monograph I compiled on Count Tallard's exile in Not- tingham 200 years ago, when that eminent Frenchman lodged with the head of the Nottingham Newdigates.

A. STAPLETON. l.->8. Xoel Street, Nottingham.

MAJOR HAMILL OF CAPRI (10 S. vii. 27). This gallant Irishman was w r ounded at the battle of Maida, in Calabria, 4 July, 1806, in which the French under General Regnier were defeated by the British under Major- General Sir John Stuart. Major Hamill's " judicious conduct " in the field on a later occasion is noted by Lieut.-Col. Alexander Bryce, RE., in a dispatch dated 8 Sept., 1808. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

" G," HARD OR SOFT (10 S. vi. 129, 190, 236). I lately found that in the family name Gifford the G was hard in Ullenhall, near Henley-in-Arden, Warwick, while it is oft, I believe, in Bishopswood, near Bre- wood, Staffs. T. NICKLIN.

SPLITTING FIELDS OF ICE (10 S. iv. 325, 395, 454, 513; v. 31, 77). The following passage is from Sven Hedin's ' Through Asia,' 1898, vol. i. p. 160. It refers to Lake Kara-kid in the Pamirs, a saline sheet of water, with an area of 120 to 150 square miles :

"We rode across the ice about three miles due west from the island, then stopped and set about sounding the depth of the western basin. The normal tension of the ice was of course the same in

t Ve i ry i < l l L arter --v? u - r ridins over it; naturally dis- turbed the equilibrium, by increasing the downward pressure. As we moved along, every step the horses took accompanied by peculiar sounds. " moment there was a growling like the deep Lass notes ot an organ, the next it was as though somebody were thumping a big drum in the 'Hat below, the,, came a crash as though a railway- carnage door were being banged to ; then as though a tag round stone had been flung into the lake. I hese sounds were accompanied by alternate whistlings and winnings; whilst every now and a.a-n we seemed to hear far - off ^marine ex plosions. At every loud report the horses twitched their ears and started, whilst the men .inopdat <>MC another with superstitious SgtfSlSSSJi* I The Sarts believed that the sounds were caused by

HK fishes kno,k,ng their heads against theiee?

that licie were no fish in Kara-Kul Then wli^n T asked //,,, what was the cause of the strange sounds we heard under the ice, and whaTw
 * t >e more inte ,*, Ki| .,i liz f winicML them 1

v <*od alone knows !)." ^ The Morning Post, 31 Dec., 1906, an article on Winter Joyance ' speaks of the wide frozen waterways" of Canada

under which a deep, mysterious booming it were the reverberating knell of a thousand-ton gun is heard now and again."

In England, on the tidal Trent, the ice, fractured as it is forming by the up-rush of water from the Humber twice a day, finally freezes into a very rough surface, " like a lot of stone slabs chucked together any way." An old man bred up not far from the river informs me that he has more than once heard the thundering of the ice at East Butterwick when the thaw began after a severe " blast." M. P.

Letters recently published in The Morning Post afford information illustrative of the words of Lowell and Wordsworth which were the subject of comment at the refer- ences given above. In a letter printed in the issue of The Morning Post for 3 January inquiry was made whether the writer of an article on the delights of a Canadian winter, which had appeared in a previous issue, could explain the " deep, mysterious boom- ing " described as being " heard now and again " coming from the frozen waterways. The Morning Post of 7 January contained the following replies, the first of which is from the pen of the writer of the article which gave occasion for the inquiry :

SIR, The tremendous sound to which reference was made in ' Winter Joyance ' has never yet, so far as 1 know, been scientifically explained. I have heard it many times riot only on large ice-bound lakes in Canada, but also in England -c.r/., when skating at night in the early eighties on Holling- worth Lake, a big reservoir near Rochdale, in Lancashire, and on that occasion the noise was somewhat terrifying to the mind of a boy without previous experience of such portents. Li no single instance was a thaw imminent ; indeed, more often than not the frost was tightening its grip on the waters. In Canada the beginning of a "cold snap" is sometimes marked by this booming; the alteration in the volume of the covering of ice may cause the formation of a great crack (which may be miles long), and this "ice-quake" has its thunder. At other times, it may be, harmonic vibrations are set up by a rapid change in temperature and the sound is produced just as in the case of a sheet of iron when shaken. The theory of escaping gases is certainly not a good working hypothesis on which to base an explanation. The winter of Western Canada has other weird noises not easily explained ; for example, the "noise of a going in the sky" (to translate a Cree term), which is mentioned, by the way, in 'Lorna Doone,' and certainly does suggest the passing by of a company of ululating demons. I hope "Devon Prior" will succeed in obtaining a full and complete scientific explanation. Yours, &c.,

Jan. 5. E. B. OSBORN.

SIR, In reply to a letter signed "Devon Prior." I write to say that when I was a girl and lived with my father in Canada he went every Sunday after- noon from Three Rivers across tlie St. Lawrence River for a service at a place called Nicolay, and I