Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/523

 ii s. VIIL DEC. 27, 1913.] NOTES Aft D QUERIES.

517

For other paintings relating to the life of St. Christopher see Mrs. Jameson's ' Sacred and Legendary AH ' (1900 ed., vol. ii.).
 * Andrea Mantegna ' (Engl. trans., 1901).

W. A. B. COOLIDGE. Grindelwald.

"RUCKSAC" OR "RticKSAc" (11 S. viii. 447, 497). Both forms are wrong, as there must be a final k. The u should not be modified, as the meaning is not " back-sack," but " swinging - sack " or " joggling - sack," to distinguish it from the knapsack, which Is tightly bound to the shoulders.

Two CURIOUS PLACE-NAMES : SIDBURY {11 S. viii. 447). On Kester Mel Way light is thrown by Kismelton on the Torridge River, which was formerly spelt Kistmeldon, Kistermeldon, and Clystermeldon.

OLD SARUM.

GREEK TYPOGRAPHY (11 S. viii. 429). The disuse of contractions began quite a century earlier than the conjectural date of 1840. At hand, on my own shelves, I have the Greek Testament printed by R. Urie at Glasgow in 1750, in the prefatory note to which he says " typis usi sumus recentibus," and the only contractions employed are the small common ones for /cat and Se, and one or two other little words ; then in 1794 there is part i. of John Hodgkin's ' Calligraphia Graeca,' en- graved by H. Ashby, in which no contraction at all appears; and in 1802 Reeves's Greek Testament. Thenceforward I think it is found that the old characters entirely dis- appear. W. D. MACRAY.

THE ROAR OF GUNS (9 S. vii. 207, 258, 493; viii. 112; 11 S. viii. 269, 310, 376). William Derham, D.D., F.R.S., Canon of Windsor, &c., details the results of some experiments in sound-waves in his ' Physico- Theology,' sixth edition, London, 1723, foot-note to p. 133, as follows :

"As to the distance to which Sound may be sent, having some doubt, whether there was any difference between the Northern and Southern parts, by the favour of my learned and illustrious friend Sir Henry Newton, her late Majesty's Envoy a.t Florence : I procured some experiments to be made for me in Italy. His most Serene Highness the Great Duke, was pleased to order great guns to be fired for this purpose at Florence, and persons were appointed on purpose to observe them at Leghorn, which they compute is no less than .">,"> miles in a straight line. But notwithstanding the "Country between being somewhat hilly and woody, and the wind also was not favouring, only very calm and still, yet the sound was plainly enough heard. And they tell me, that the Leghorn guns are often heard 66 miles off, at Porto Ferraro ; that

when the French bombarded Genoa, they heard it near Leghorn, 90 miles distant ; and in the Messina insurrection, the guns were heard from thence as far as Augusta and Syracuse, about 100 Italian miles. These distances being so considerable, give me reason to suspect, that sounds fly as far, or nearly as far, in the Southern, as in the Northern parts of the world, notwithstanding we have a few instances of sounds reaching farther distances. As Dr. Hearn tells us of guns fired at Stockholm in 1685, that were heard 180 English miles. And in the Dutch war, 1672, the guns were heard above 200 miles. Vid. Phil. Trans., No. 113."

FRANK CURRY. Liverpool.

Mrs. Arbuthnot, the Duke of Welling- ton's friend, writing to Lady Shelley from Walmer Castle on 2 Oct., 1832, says :

<k We were very much interested about the firing for two days which we heard from the coast of Belgium, and which we thought must be Antwerp. It was very surprising that we should so distinctly hear a cannonade that was at least a hundred miles off."

See ' The Diary of Frances, Lady Shelley, 1818-73,' vol. ii. p. 219 (London, John Murray, 1913). T. F. D.

ANDREA FERRARA AND THE FREEMASONS' STATE SWORD OF SHREWSBURY (11 S. viii. 469). This sword was fully illustrated on four separate plates in Ars Quatuor Coro- natorum, xxv. 283 (1912), and details con- cerning it given, as well as at p. 31 ; from the latter reference, in a paper on ' The Jerusalem Sols ' (&c.), by Mr. F. W. Levander, it appears that the sword, presented to the then undivided Masonic province of North Wales and Shropshire in 1861, was quite recently undiscoverable upon inquiry. It has since been figured and described as stated. The " Sols " came to an end with the eighteenth century, and it is incorrect to say that the sword " is used " as their state sword now.

There is much on the subject of Andrea Ferrara in the class of books of which the late Capt. Richard F. Burton's ' Book of the Sword ' may be cited as an example.

W. B. H.

ANCIENT WIT AND HUMOUR (11 S. viii. 289, 334, 434, 491). Add :

" Praxis jocandi, Hoc est, jocorum sive facetiarum in conversationibus hominum rite adhibendarum via ac ratio commodissima

"Nunc primum ex manuscripto Regii cujusdam Goraddivi Italogermani in lucem edita. Franco-

furti 1602."

On the fly-leaf of my copy some former owner has written " Livre rare et plaisant." ROBERT PIERPOINT.