Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/331

 n s. VIIL OCT. 25, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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of its writer, Owen Lloyd, was given. The title-page of the Dutch reprint is as follows :

" Het gezight van den Panther. In zes hoofdstukken verdeeld. Zo als het op den 28 van Wintermaand des Jahrs 1653, in den morgenstond op het aanbreeken van den dag, vertoond wierdt aan Owen Leoyd. Die in den jaare 1643 in Virginia woonde, en aldaar zyn bezit en middelen verloor. Zynde 't zelve in Engeland gedrukt in 't jaar 1662. Waar by nu gevoegd is zyne brief aan John Rogers, Prediker onder de Vyfde Monarchy-huyden : waar in hy zyn gevoelen daar over te kennen geeft.

" Nooit te vooren aid us genieen gemaakt, niaar nu ten proeve aan een yder voprgesteld. Uyt het Engelsch vertaald. Gedrukt in 't jaar 1688."

The Preface " Aan den Leezer " is dated "Den 22 van Hefnmaand, 1672. Eleu- theropolis," and the reprint contains a translation of Lloyd's letter to John Rogers, dated " Uyt myn Herberg in de Vliegende Post, in White Fryers, London, den 7 van Lentemaand, 1654."

" Leoyd " is, of course, a Dutch printer's rendering of Lloyd, and the copy of this reprint in the British Museum is catalogued under " Lloyd " (Owen).

One important point seems to appear from this reprint. John Rogers, the Fifth- Monarchy leader, must have taken part in the fabrication of the forged and fraudulent literature of the Restoration. Was he not also one of the "Confederates," the two " Committees of Six," sitting in Holland and in England ? We know nothing of his writings after the Restoration, although he had been a prolific pamphleteer before the Restoration.

The same remarks apply to John Canne, who, in addition, had been a journalist, supplanting Nedham in 1659, and afterwards writing Oliver Williams's periodicals. At present, there seems to be no evidence about either of these men's careers after 1660. J. B. WILLIAMS.

(To be. continued.)

FIRE AND NEW-BIRTH.

MALAYS living in South Africa have a custom towards the end of summer of setting fire to the " bush." In the eighties colonists with thatched houses much dreaded these fires, as flames rush rapidly through the " dry " bush, and in a very short time a bungalow and its surrounding vegetation would be reduced to ashes.

One year fires were started at several points in the Table Mountain range, and

after sunset the summits presented a huge semicircle of heavenward-darting flames, whose crimson light, reflected from the slowly rising clouds of smoke, illuminated the whole plain below, where regiments of soldiers, armed with spade and pickaxe, drove back the flames, or cleared land to stop the advance of the enemy. We and our neighbours spent an anxious night watering our roofs, watching the marvels of the flame lights, and listening for the crack- ling sound of their approach in the under- growth. The wonderful picture was later vividly recalled to my mind by the scene in Wagner's ' Valkyrie,' when Brunhilde lies sleeping in the burning circle. Such bush fires renew the life of seeds and bulb Is under the soil, w r hich are not stirred in their stable sleep by the solar rays.

For life is evidence of instability, of a change in the swing of the cradle containing the germ. Plants not seen for years may reappear, and even ordinary plants may put on more brilliant clothing. After the great fire, when wandering over the burnt black stretches under the silver-firs on the slopes of Table Mountain, I espied in the distance a tiny glistening white gem set in emerald standing solitary, in the midst of blackness. On hastening to the spot I found the gem to be a very minute orchis, not more than about 2 inches high. The fairy - like flower was of shining white, with a very long and delicate labellum, and the ovate leaves were of a pure translucent green. Dr. Bolus, the well - known authority on Cape Orchidaceae, expressed much astonishment at its minute- ness, and as he had never before seen the plant, he sent it to Sir J. Hooker at Kew for identification.

We heard that this particular variety had not been found for about 200 years, when it was met with by a Dutch botanist, who named it Holothrix mundtii.

A sudden appearance of a plant after such an interval of time might, without any exaggeration, be called " spontaneous." In his 'Temple of the Rosy Cross' Dowd refers to this " spontaneity " in vegetative life :

" Vegetation does not altogether depend upon seeds, it springs spontaneously from the Earth. When a young man, my father burned several coal heaps on a bed during winter. The next fall in passing I saw several plants, commonly called Mullen, growing on the coal-bed. The Mullen plant was unknown in that part of the country previously.

"A man in N. Iowa dug a well over 100 feet

in depth. The great pile of clay lay there and

next year produced crops of weeds that were not