Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/143

 10 s. VIL FEB. 9, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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accompanied him in a canoe in summer and a sleig in winter. I shall never forget my first winte crossing of the river and my fear when the ic cracked, and boomed like "a thousand-ton gun indeed. I thought we must all go hopelessly to th bottom, but our old Canadian coachman smiled a my alarm, assuring us that there was anything bu a cause for fear, as such sounds were the stronges proof of the security of the ice and such prove to be the case. Why, I leave for explanation to th men of science, having only the power to give yo the fact, Yours, &c., R. S. M.

Jan. f>.

These letters are, I think, worthy o reproduction in ' N. & Q.' F. JARRATT.

'THE TIMES,' 1962 (10 S. i. 470). Ther was an earlier squib of a similar kind, viz. in 1850, ' The Times Newspaper, as it ma be in 1950,' printed by John Such, of No. 1 Norman Terrace, Wandsworth Road, in th< parish of Clapham, and published by hin at his office, 29, Budge Row, Watling Street sold by Newman & Co., 48, Watling Street, London. It covered four pages, and the price was 6d. The Parliamentary intelli gence includes reports from the House o Peeresses and the House of Ladies. The Court of Queen's Bench appears under tha - name ; but judge, counsel, and jiiry an clockwork automata. Some fun is mad< at the expense of old Henry Widdicombe. RICHARD H. THORNTON.

DUKE or KENT'S CHILDREN (10 S. vii 48). The Duke was at Halifax, Nova 'Scotia, from May, 1794, till August, 1800 Madame de St. Laurent living openly witl him ; but she certainly had no children at that time. Three members of the French Canadian family of De Salaberry owed everything to the friendship and patronage of Madame de St. Laurent, but in their letters to her and to their own family down to 1815 they make no reference to any children. But the Duke had children by Miss Green, Miss Gay, and other f air T but frail damsels, and Lewis Melville may have thought them the children of Madame de St. Laurent. M. N. G.

The father of Constance Kent (Road Murder, 1860) was said to be a son of the late Duke of Kent. WM. H. PEET.

REV. R. RAUTHMEL (10 S. vii. 8). The author of ' Antiquitates Bremetonacenses ' was the son of Arthur Rauthmel, husband- man, and was born at Lees, in Yorkshire. He took his B.A. degree at St. John's College, 'Cambridge, in 1713, and was afterwards perpetual curate of Whitewell in Bowland. He was buried at Chipping (co. Lane.),

15 May, 1743, and was at the time of his death still curate of Whitewell.

The Rauthmell family was settled at Lees in the seventeenth century.

HENRY FISHWICK.

" THE OLD HIGHLANDER " (10 S. vii. 47, 92). COL. MALET thinks I " see the features of a Lowlander in the fact of these effigies being clean shaved." Not at all. I said that their clean-shaved faces had Lowland features. The type is that of such dis- tinguished Scots as Lord Chief Justice Sir Alexander Cockburn or General Andrew Wauchope and the type is easily detected on account of the absence of beard.

T. O. H.

" MITIS" (10 S. vii. 68). DR. BRADLEY is quite right in supposing that mitis-green and mitis- casting have no etymological connexion. The former is from Mitis, the name of the Vienna manufacturer who dis- covered it in 1814. The latter according to Brockhaus, ' Konversations - Lexikon,' Jubilee edition is from Latin mitis, " soft," no doubt on account of the fluidity which this process gives to the molten metal.

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

" MOKE," A DONKEY (10 S. vii. 68). I remember an epic poem published in 1844 called ' Duck-legged Dick had a Donkey,' in which the term in question appears several times ; author unknown ; publisher, J. Catnach, Moranouth Street, Seven Dials. Though not so long as Homer's ' Iliad,' it is too long for the columns of ' N. & Q.' One verse recorded the fact that " the moke was sent to the greenyard " during the period of its master's imprisonment for dis- orderly conduct, and died for want of the necessaries of life. The owner afterwards bought " A new mo ke and a hamper for 17 bob and a kick " (17s. Qd.) ; but through deficiency of vision and means of locomotion ' the new moke " " was as quiet as the one -hat was dead." Cum multis aliis.

WALTER SCARGILL.

But a few days ago I read in 5 S. x., xi. >r xii. the paragraph sought by DR. BRADLEY '. have endeavoured to find my way back to t, but the quest has been unsuccessful.

ST. SWITHIN.

I can remember seeing, more than sixty ears ago perhaps in 1842 in a penny illus- rated paper, a rude engraving of a row in t. Giles's, called ' A General Strike.' One f the actors in it suggested having the ^oke in court, as- he witnessed the whole of he business. " The magistrate, however,