Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/595

 10 s. VIIL DEC. 21, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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at Chatham, and also to the C.R.E. at Edinburgh, and find that in neither case can any trace be found ; but the latter officer adds : " Because there is no trace of any letter written on the subject, it is not safe to conclude that the event did not take place." So much for rumour.

I have a letter from a friend who visited within a month the Castle, giving me a rough plan of the ground indicated, which is quite in accord with my own recollection of over thirty years ago. The writer says :

"The baby was evidently buried under the stairs, but the actual stone removed was from the outside, but easily accessible from the interior."

MB. ELIOT HODGKIN'S note at the first reference gives only an extract from a letter from me which appeared in another journal, the burden of which was my disbelief in the existence of any descendant of Mary Stewart. The reasons given were :

1. Contemporary rumour that a newly born soldier's child was substituted, and passed out of the Castle in a basket.

2. The great improbability of the Queen giving birth to a living child, from a medical point of view, after the frightful ordeal of Rizzio's murder in her immediate presence, and within three months of the birth.

3. The actual discovery of the infant's remains nearly three centuries afterwards, virtually in the Queen's apartments.

I am not singular, from the above reasons, in believing that Mary Stewart left no descendant whatever, and deploring the misplaced loyalty of both Cavalier and Jacobite. MONKBARNS.

RUMP OF A GOOSE AND DRINKING BOUTS (10 S. vii. 190, 418). The following is an extract from a sermon by Samuel Ward, Preacher of Ipswich, entitled ' Woe to Drunkards,' London, printed for John Grismand, 1627 :

' Two servants of a brewer in Ipswich, drinking for the rnmp of a turkey, struggling in their drink for it, fell into a scalding cauldron backwards ; whereof the one died presently, the other lingeringly and painfully." Quoted in ' Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London from the Roman Invasion to the Year 1700,' by James Peller Mal- colm, 2nd ed., 1811, vol. i., p. 232.

This amplifies, but does not answer, my query at the first reference.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

"POT-GALLERY" (10 S. vii. 388, 431; viii. 172, 254, 312). Without being able to settle the question, I may be allowed to give a little evidence. MR. DOUGLAS OWEN asks a question which involves an answer

of a legal character. An encroachment might not be an impediment to the naviga- tion of the river, such as a gallery built out on piles in a bend of the river, where the line of navigation went along what may be described as the chord of the arc, though technically it was an encroachment on the rights of the Crown, represented by the Conservators of the Thames, up to low-water mark. It was when these " encroachments " became " impediments " that official notice was taken. Any one can see an actual " impediment " at Greenwich, a coal wharf on the north side of Brewhouse Lane r starting from Billingsgate. There is a view of it, dated 1840, called ' The Gallery,' in Add. MS. 16, 670. AYEAHR.

" TOTTER-OUT " : " JAG " (10 S. viii. 5, 113, 294, 372, 475). I have frequently heard it said, " He has got a talking jag," or " He has got a jag on him," when some one is unusually loquacious or " gassy " perhaps, though not necessarily through a libation. R. S. B.

CAMELIAN (10 S. viii. 306, 394). Printers' devils can do most things with type, and it would not have required any effort on their part to transform carnelian into camelian, as MR. JOHN E. NORCROSS fancies they did in setting up Miss Wilkins's story of ' Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring.' Of this I do not think that they were guilty. It should not be forgotten that I claim to have seen an article of jewellery mounted in camelian : it bore not the slightest resemblance to carnelian or cornelian, and there could be no reason why a flesh-coloured variety of chalcedony and a yellow glittering amalgam which looked like gold should be called by the same name. The fact that. Camelina sativa is known as cameline and also as the " gold of pleasure " does seem to favour the idea of " camelian " being used to designate some specious composition which shammed a value and had it not.

MR. R. JOHNSON WALKER'S communica- tion is more helpful, though I am not chemist enough to know whether the " compound of pure potash and black oxyd of manganese " would conduce to personal adornment. He is correct ^ about my not having consulted his edition of Webster's ' Dictionary,' although I do not write without having made some quest in the world of words. The ' H.E.D.' under ' Chameleon ' has :

"5 Chem. Mineral chameleon or chameleon mineral a name given to manganate of potas- sium (KsMuCM, the solution of which in water