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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. iv. AUG. 12, 1911.

-will scarcely do. I may add that the com- parison printed in ' N. & Q.' in September 'last gives the names in their usual order.

J. BROWNBILL.

HALFACREE (US. iii. 467). It does not seem likely that this family name has aught to do with " half-acre stream." The acre from A.-S. Jicerfcegr, fair-haired. Fer- guson supposes, however, the name to be the anglicized form of A.-S. ^Elfgar, Nor- wegian Alfgejr. So, too, Halfpenny. and Twopenny are said to be both forms of D'Aubigny. Halfacree is the vulgar pro- nunciation of Half acre, as when Tommy Atkins speaks of " the bloody massacree of Cawnpore." N. W. HILL.
 * Patronymica Britannica ' derives Half-

New York.

APPARITION AT PIBTON, HEBTS (11 S. iii. 466 ; iv. 33). From Miss Ellen Pollard's account of High Down, Pirton, which is shortly to be printed, I learn that the Cava- lier's name was Goring, and the date of his execution 15 June ; but the year is not specified. Miss Pollard's version makes him ride headless upon a white palfrey from High Down to the site of the cell in the grounds of Hitchin Priory.

W. B. GEBISH.

PRINCESS VICTORIA'S VISIT TO THE MAR- QUIS or ANGLESEY (11 S. iv. 67, 113). The matter referred to in the query by L. V. is a curious instance of the perversion of historic fact, which in this case was as follows. In 1832 the Duchess of Kent took Princess Victoria on the first of those long tours through the country which so much annoyed William IV. Part of the time they spent at Beaumaris in Anglesey, where a house had been hired for a month ; but cholera broke out while they were there, and the Marquis of Anglesey immediately offered the Duchess the loan of his mansion, Plas Newydd, a delightful place on the western shore of the Menai Straits, just south of where the Tubular Bridge now crosses the water, and so cut off by park land from village and town that no infection could touch it. CLARE JEBBOLD.

Hampton-oii-Thames.

KING GEORGE V.'s ANCESTORS (11 S. iv. 87).-

(1) Ernest I. (cl. 1844) was the son of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg (d. 1806).

(2) Louise his wife was daughter of Augus- tus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. She died 1831, aged 32.

(3) Wilhelm of Gliicksburg was son of Frederick, and grandson of Charles Antony of Gliicksburg.

(4) Louisa of Hesse-Cassel was daughter of Charles of Hesse-Cassel and Louisa, daughter of Frederick V. of Denmark by Louisa, daughter of George II. of England. Charles of Hesse-Cassel (above) was second son of Frederick II. of Hesse-Cassel by Mary, daughter of George II. of England.

(5) Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel was son of Frederick, third son of Frederick II. and Mary of England.

(6) Charlotte, wife of the above Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel, was daughter of Frederick (d. 1805), son of Frederick V. of Denmark by his second wife Mary of Brunswick.

A. R. BAYLEY.

THERMOMETER (11 S. iv. 87). In a little work entitled ' The Evolution of the Ther- mometer, 1592-1743,' by Henry Carrington Bolton (The Chemical Publishing Company, Easton, Pa.), 1900, the American author clearly shows that one of the most persistent of " vulgar errors " is the assertion that the thermometer was invented about 1608 by a Hollander named Cornelius Drebbel. Burckhardt, the German authority on the subject, has shown how the blunder ori- ginated, and yet, in the records of invention and dictionaries this error is repeated to the present day.

In 1624 a book was published at Pont-a- Mousson, entitled ' La Ptecreation Mathe- maticque,' over the pen-name A. van Etten, but written by the Jesuit Father Jean Leurechon, in which the word thermometer is found for the first time ; the author describes and figures " a thermometer, an instrument for measuring degrees of heat and cold that are in the air."

The word thermoscope first appears in print in the treatise ' Sphaera mundi, seu cosmographia demonstrative,' written in 1617 by Giuseppe Bianconi, and printed at Bologna in 1620.

Evidence establishes the following points : 1. The thermometer was invented by Galileo Galilei between 1592 and 1597. 2. The instrument was an inverted air thermoscope, containing either water or wine, and pro- vided with a scale of degrees. 3. By its use Galileo determined relative temperatures of different seasons. 4. Galileo made thermo- metric observations of freezing mixtures. Sanctorius, the Italian physician, and one of the colleagues of Galileo, nowhere claims to have invented the thermometer, as is