Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/398

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NOTES AND QUERIES. ca s. xn. NOV. 13, 1915.

It may interest your readers to have the explanation of the cat's (comparative) ' in- difference to her master according to the Hebrew Alphabet of Ben Sira : I quote from the book above named, Appendix III., p. 362 :

Q. Why is it that the dog recognizes his master and the cat does not?

It. Whoever eats of anything at which mice have nibbled forgets what he has been taught. It is only natural that he who eats the mouse itself should forget his master.

PEREGRINUS.

We have a pet cat, a torn tabby, who retrieves very cleverly. He is very fond of sugar, and will run after a lump (he prefers it dirty, and is especially keen on a piece dropped from a bird's cage), bring it back, and drop it close to, or into the hand of, the person who threw it. He will play with a piece of sugar on the stairs, when he feels in need of some diversion or exercise, by using one paw as a bat to hit the sugar down several stairs, and when in this way he has sent it to the lowest landing, he will pick it up in his mouth, bring it to the top, and begin the game again ; this he will do until he is tired out. He steals lump sugar when- ever he can get the chance, and will knock down a small tin, in which he knows some is usually kept, hoping to open it by the fall and so get at his favourite plaything.

ETHEL B. SAINSBURY.

29, Abbey Road, N.W.

At one time we had two cats, mother and daughter ; the younger always kittened a week or two before the older. Our custom was to take away all but one kitten each. When the older cat found the kitten of the younger was bigger than her own, she invariably carried the bigger one to her own box. We put it back to its own mother several times, but she would as often carry it away again, so W T C exchanged kittens, and as a rule the younger would be satisfied with the smaller kitten. On one occasion, how- ever, they both preferred the larger kitten, and nursed it between them, and were perfectly happy, squeezed very closely together in a rather small box.

I may add that the older cat always acted as though expecting the younger to " show the deference due to me." M. S. R.

' THE LADY OF ELCHE ' (11 S. xii. 342). A very remarkable bust of a woman found at Elche, in the province of Murcia, in 1897, now in the Louvre Museum. See Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, xxi. 89, ,8 March, 1906. E. B.

'THE NORMAN PEOPLE' (US. xii. 302,. 370). Although I am not certain, I think LEO C. will find that the compiler, or rather editor, of this book unintentionally revealed himself in the first chapter of the " Additional Notes," p. 73, which he gave as an " Intro- duction." The surname and arms of a family named Toler are there referred to at some length, and seem to have greatly interested him personally. Now if we refer to old edi- tions of Burke' s ' Peerage ' under the title of the " Earl of Effingham," we find that the late Robert Edmond Chester Waters was a descendant of John Toller, serjeant at law. This gentleman it was who used to- writ e in ' N. & Q.' under the nom de guerre of TEWARS, containing the letters of his surname rearranged. He was an industrious student of genealogy, usually critical and reliable sometimes, I am afraid, neither, if this work was really his, and, when he got into the remote past, apt to be as reckless as a Tudor Herald.

It was ' The Norman People,' published in 1874, that first made known, in print at all events, the Breton origin of the Royal House of Stewart. That this fact should have remained unnoticed here for so many years for Lobineau's ' Histoire de Bretagne ' was printed in 1635 does not say much for research in the past. One could not help noticing it. It was known to me before 1874, and having seen the review of this work in TheAthenceum (27 June, 1874, p. 858) r but not the book itself, I sent to ' N. & Q.' (' Fleance,' 5 S. x. 402). This note of mine drew an interesting reply from TEWARS (*&. 472).

DK. ROUND'S article 'The Origin of the Stewarts' in 'Peerage Studies,' p. 115,. printed in 1901, is, as w r e might expect, the most critical essay on the subject. New facts relating to the pedigree turn up most unexpectedly, for DK. ROUND, " too late for insertion in the text, discovered " in Thoro- ton's history of Notts that Jordan, a grand- son of "Flaald, was a landholder in that county,, holding the manor of Tuxford and other lands.

DR. ROUND draws attention to the con- clusion come to by the late Mr. W. S. Ellis,, in an article on the origin of the Pelhams in The Oeneal gist (iv. 213), that the writer " E. Ave nel ' ' was the author of ' The Norman People,' which seems 1 kely enough. A paper on the Bohuns in the Her. and Gen*, (vi. 429) is signed " Eustace Ayenel " ; yet it must be added that there is a lengthy criticism of this very article in the next j volume (vii. 289), signed " Edmund Chester