Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/373

 11 S. I. MAY 7, 1910.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

365

York (continued). John Gilfillan, printer. Coffee Yard, 18th cent., and Thursday Market, 1741. W. Blanchard & Co., printers, 1777. John Todd, 1781-93. Walker & Pennington, printers, Coffee Yard,

1782.

T. Wilson and R. Spence, 1787. Lucas Lund, printer, Low Ousegate, 1787. Wilson, Spence & Mawman, printers, 1789-99. Tesseyman, 1793. William Blanchard, printer, 1797-8.

Scottish, Irish, and American booksellers I hope to deal with in my next communi- cation. W. C. B.

LEIBNIZ ON THE PENNY POST. The following extract from a letter of Leibniz to M. Remond, dated from Hanover, 11 Feb., 1715, will interest collectors of material on the subject of the Post Office :

" N'y a-t-il pas aujourd'hui a Paris une Poste Particuliere pour la Ville, comme il y en a & Londres, qui s'appelle Penny-Post ? On y peut faire rendre promtement & surement des lettres en les envoyant seulement au Bureau du quartier, sans avoir besoin d'envoyer des valets bien loin. Je ne sai [sic] si le Bureau d'adresse a e"te" r^tabli a Paris ; il a 6t6 commence" & abandonn6 plus d'une fois. Cependant celui de Londres subsiste; on 1'appelle House of Intelligence (note On 1'appelle the Penny-Post Office).

WILLIAM BEER, Librarian. Howard Memorial Library, New Orleans.

"JEW'S CAKE." I do not know whether this localism has found its way into the slang dictionary yet ; but, passing through one of the side streets here, I heard an urchin address another (who was munching a large strip of " passover " with infinite gusto) thus: "Hullo! where dijjer crib that Jew's cake ? n M. L. R. BRESLAR.

Percy House, South Hackney.

S\\ KDENBORG'S PATRONYMIC. This is often supposed to be derived from his "country of origin," but that item of ety- mology is incorrect with reference either to the earlier form "Swedberg" or to the lengthened and dignified " Swedenborg," adopted when the family was ennobled in I'll). The matter is well and correctly put by Mr. A. H. Stroh in The New Church Messenger for 30 March (art. ' Journeys and Investigations in Eastern Sweden ' ) thus :

" Tin- student of Swedenborg's life will recall l'"\\ his grandfather, Daniel Isaackson ('Daniel "I" Sweden '), the father of Jesper Swedberg, with ^"iiir of his comrades, pumped the water out of iin ol<| copper mine at Falun and became very \vi-althy. About 1642 ho bought a section of land M'Mt- K.ilmi. i-.-illt'd ' Sweden,' a name from which 'Swedenborg' and 'Swedberg' were derived.

The word ' Sweden ' should not be confounded with the name of the country, which in Swedish is ' Sverige, signifying the ' Kingdom of Svea/ The ' Sweden ' near Falun means a place in the forest cleared by fire, and the same root occurs in other words which mean ' to burn ' and ' burnt ' or cleared land. (Cf. sveda, svida, and especially svedja, which when compounded as svedjeland equals a clearing made by fire.)"

CHARLES HICHAM.

SLAVONIC LINDEN FOLK-LORE. The fol- lowing passage, which I translate from the Croatian of Janko Tomic, illustrates the widespread veneration of the ancient Slavs for this tree. The name of Leipzig is trace- able to lipa; and no doubt names like Podlipny and Podlipsky, and perhaps Lipen (July), originate from this source :

" As the palm to the Arab, the olive to the Greek, the oak to the German, the fig to the Indian, so is the linden to the Slav ^the favourite of all trees. It is so closely related to us that we cannot recall any important event without mention of the linden. In the midst of the tribal court and of the village rose the proud linden, the holy tree of the ancient Slav. Dear to us is the linden, and it must needs be so since in remote times the folk chose their dwellings beneath its shade ; the members of the community elected here their heads and judges. Beneath its broad crown our forefathers met and celebrated import- ant events ; here the people invoked their gods for help, prayed and sacrificed to them ; here was their first temple and hallowed ground. The linden is the most beautiful native tree, and we may call it with perfect right the king of native trees. The Russian peasant even now wears shoes of linden bark (bast shoes) called lapti. The oldest Cech ruler, Premysl, and the Polish Prast wore shoes of linden bark. But this event shows that the ancient Slavs not only knew and used the linden, but also venerated it, namely, that the Slavs by the sea, being baptized in 1124 near the great city Pavic, planted four lindens in memory thereof. The oldest Croatian linden mentioned in history was in Slavonia, near Cernik, the linden of Bishop Augustine Gazottic, who died in 1323. We have a proverb, to stand like the linden god."

FRANCIS P. MARCHANT.

Streatham Common.

A PERIPATETIC SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY : CADET-GASSICOURT. In the course of an obituary notice of M. Cadet-Gassicourt which appeared in The Monthly Magazine for May, 1823, p. 330, it is stated that he " projected the formation of a Nomad Institute to perambulate the different parts of France at stated intervals, to remark on the progress and wants of local industry, and to invite the attention of government to the result of their researches."

It will be seen that the objects of the proposed society are very similar to those of the British Association, which was not founded until 1831. The date of Cadet-