Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/549

 10 s. VIL JUNE s r 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

453

struck by a wedge-shaped flint held in the right, the spark produced dropping on the tinder in the box underneath, when a sulphur- tipped hand-made match, about 5 in. by ^ in., was applied and a flame obtained. I saw no machine-made matches in those days. The agricultural labourer lit his pipe by striking a roadside flint on the back of his clasp-knife so that the spark should fall on dry moss or other dry combustible matter which he carried in his pocket ; whilst the skilled artisan and others would rely on the convex lens of the burning-glass, wind and weather permitting.

CHARLES SHELLEY.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (10 S. vii. 309, 374). 1. This same thought was expressed many centuries before Palladas by Hipponax. See the two lines quoted by Stobaeus (' Florilegium,' 68, 8) :

ywai/cos eicriv TIS Ka/c^epry T

EDWARD BENSLY. University College, Aberystwyth.

The appeal to ' N. & Q.' from Iquique (ante, p. 389) has not been in vain. " No star ever rose or set without influence some- where " is from ' Lucile,' by Owen Meredith, very near the end of Canto VI. Part II.

W. L.

The quotation inquired for by N. W. H. (ante, p. 389) is from Macaulay's essay on Leigh Hunt, Edinburgh Review, January, 1841 ; and the passage in which it occurs is thus given in his ' Essays,' Longman, 1858, vol. ii. p. 155, under ' Comic Drama- tists of the Restoration ' :

" It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We are by no means un- mindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the Puritans of that time, the deliverers of Eng- land, the founders of the American Common- wealths. But in the day of their power those men committed one great fault, which left deep and lasting traces in the national character and manners. They mistook the end and overrated the force of government."

W. S.

MIRAGE (10 S. vii. 390). From a position near Fairlight, Hastings, I once saw the coast of France with startling distinctness It was not till afterwards that I realized that it was an effect of refraction in the air This was a case of mirage resembling th celebrated fata Morgana.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

This optical delusion is unpleasantly familiar to British riflemen. At the butts

>r ranges on warm humid days the targets, een through or in a mirage, seem to dance n the sunlight, and appear higher than hey really are. Like wind and wet, a mirage is counted an active drawback to good shooting, and plays strange tricks, with bullets. WILLIAM JAGGARD.

SEINE, RIVER AND SAINT (10 S. vii. 348). There is no connexion whatsoever between he two, beyond that of locality. The source of the Seine is near Chanceaux, several miles from St. Seine, and in another ownship, altogether. St. Seine, the town, takes its name from St. Sejanus, and is always spoken of as St. Seine-l'Abbaye. !^ot only is it in another township, but on he other side of the watershed, its medicinal springs feeding the Tille, a tributary of the Saone. The water of the source of the Seine finds its way in wet weather to
 * he Channel ; that of St. Seine to the

Mediterranean in wet weather only, for in the summer heats the true source of the Seine is at Chatillon-sur-Seine, many miles below. The Municipality of Paris, n the early days of last century, had the Seine traced to its source, and erected an allegorical figure there, known to the whole countryside as "la Dame au Bain de Pieds." When the foundations were being dug, it was found that the Romans had been there already, and had done something of the same kind. At St. Seine-l'Abbaye the beautiful church is still in good condition. H. HALLIDAY SPARLING.

15, Villa Davoust, Asnieres (Seine).

The town of St. Seine-l'Abbaye is four or five miles from the source of the river. The abbey was founded by St. Seine, who was " the son of a pagus of Memont," and lived in the sixth century. One of the legends of the saint is that he walked across France, and, wherever he was well received, he asked his hosts what they would like in return, and the general request was for drinking water, for there were no streams and few wells in that part of the country. On his return to the abbey he struck the rock, and sent forth the river, giving it instructions that it was to flow by the cottages of those who had entertained him, and dodge the habitations of the in- hospitable. This accounts for the very serpentine course taken by the river. In- cidents in the saint's career are represented in a series of fifteenth-century paintings on the back of the chancel screen in the present abbey, which is a very fine old church