Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/225

 ii s. i. MAR. 12, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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represented. The hopper is a long, not a round basket, and the stake to which the strap by which it is hung from the sower's neck is attached is midway between the ends. The figure of the thresher is almost equally faulty as regards its attitude. The flail was used all the winter through on my father's farm, when I was a lad, and I have often tried my own skill with it, but I never saw it held as in this design.

C. C. B.

The methods followed in sowing by hand or sowing broadcast (which are not entirely superseded by the drill) depend materially on the variety of grain and on the quantity or weight allotted to an acre. Where corn, such as wheat, oats, barley, or vetches, is to be distributed, there is considerable bulk to be apportioned, and the seedsman has quite a load to carry in hfs seed basket or skep ; then he follows the process described (ante, p. 46) by C. C. B.

Where small grain, as turnip or onion, has to be applied perhaps six or eight Ib. of seed per acre a different method and great exactness are required, or the seeds- man would not succeed in covering the ground with so limited a quantity of seed. The sower then takes a breadth of about a yard, and in marching down the field he j allows his casts to overlap each other, thus I gaining an even distribution. Instead of i plying both hands, he uses only the thumb 1 and finger of the right hand, which keep ! time with the stride of his right leg, while he takes his pinch of seed from a bowl which he, holds in his left arm. By care and dexterity j great precision may be attained, but , seedsmen who accomplish the task perfectly are rare, and they dislike gusty winds, which mar their work. We had a field in this parish known as Hand-in-Bowl field. W. W. GLENXY. Barking, Essex.

I think the design of the sower on the cover -of The Cornhill has by some process been transposed. It is usual for the sower to cast with his right hand', taking the seed at each step from a hopper suspended on side by a strap over the right shoulder.

The attitude of the ploughman is that which he would take in pressing on the ploughtails to tilt up the share when about to turn at the headland. The thresher is standing just as he would in swinging the flail to bring it down on the corn. The reaper's left arm should have been more

advanced, so as to encircle sufficient standing corn to make a sheaf while the right hand severs it with the sickle.

When I was an observant lad between sixty and seventy years ago I watched those operations, and the mental picture is still clear. JOHN BAVINGTON JONES.

Dover.

" PURPOSE,' 1 ALLEGED NAME OF A DANCE (10 S. xii. 27). Referring to Knox's 'His- tory of the Reformation in Scotland/ Hill Burton in his ' History of Scotland/ 1873, vol. iv. p. 58, remarks :

" Knox lifts his testimony against the dance ' called the purpose,' which the Queen trod with Chatelar ; and it is easy to believe it to have been sufficiently indecorous."

W. S.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Masters of Literature. Thackeray. Edited by

Gr. K. Chesterton. (Bell & Sons.) THE selections which are here made from Thacke- ray's works are admirably chosen, representing the best of the big novels, social satire, newspaper controversy, historical and personal essays, and poems. We find, for instance, Major Pendennis confronting Capt. Costigan ; the deaths of Col. Newcome, Lord Castlewood, and Beatrix Esmond ; and Thackeray's rejoinder to The Times, ' Thunder and Small Beer,' in which, we think, the obvious anger somewhat spoils the irony.

Mr. Chesterton, as might be expected, puts a good deal of himself into the short summaries which precede the extracts, and the Introduction. Thus the first section of ' The Newcomes ' is introduced by the statement that " the general theme of the book is the general theme of Thacke- ray : that knaves and fools alike fail, but that there is something dignified and genial about the failure of fools."

The celebrated essay on George IV. should not have been printed without a note that it is unfair in detail, if not unhistorical. In his note on the ' Poems ' Mr. Chesterton frankly recognizes the inadequacy of scenes from a story even approxi- mately to represent its strength and growth.

In the Introduction he gives us full measure of his vivid paradox and original views. It is of various quality, and seems to us now sound and admirably expressed, and again wrong-headed and desperately ingenious. All of it, at any rate, can be read with pleasure. There may be even something salutary in the irritation which Mr. Chesterton's obiter dicta occasionally inspire. They are, at any rate, superior to the bedizened and cautious platitudes which pass for criticism in many quarters.

The 'Fortnightly Review for March opens with the usual notice of ' Imperial and Foreign Affairs,' a summary of great interest. William II., " with no Bismarck to overshadow him," is said to possess and use more personal power than any of his pre-