Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/111

 11 S. V. F*;B. 3, 1912.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

87

other works. As this is the Dickens cen- tenary year, it may be suggested to Dr. Leeper and the governing body of Trinity College that the publication of this corre- spondence, tactfully and judiciously edited, would be a very acceptable and appropriate contribution to the celebration.

J. F. HOGAN. Royal Colonial Institute,

Northumberland Avenue.

THE SUPERFLUITY OF BOOKS. Lord Rose- bery and Mr Edmund Gosse the one in a speech, the other in a letter addressed to The Times have started a campaign against the superfluity of books, and the latter states that a general public destruction is necessary. But who can judge of the books that are to be kept and those that are to be destroyed ? I think that what with the bad paper newspapers and books are printed on (for cheapness and large sales), and the destruction due to insects and want of care, time will annihilate everything, and leave nothing but dust. And under what- ever name you put him, whether Time or Nature, he it is who shall solve this diffi- culty. .This important question is due to many factors. Until now, in past times, books were only destroyed for political or religious purposes, and this proposed mode opens a new era in the life of libraries and their contents. E. FIGAROLA-CANEDA. Cuba.

MIEBS, SILHOUETTE ARTIST. (See 11 S. ii. 369, 418.) I have just corne across an advertisement in the first of a long series of volumes of art cuttings given to me by Mr. Humphry Ward. It appeared in a news- paper of 1790, and is headed ' Most Striking Likenesses,' andgoes^on: "Profile shades in miniature, executed in a style entirely new, essentially different, and allowed by the first artists to be infinitely superior to any others. The invention of J. Miers, No. 162, Strand." Miers refers to " the extensive patronage, and the high encomiums " with which he has been "honoured " by the first rank of nobility, &c. The time of sitting for these portraits was two minutes, and the cost varied from Is. 6d. to one guinea.

W. ROBERTS.

" CAULKER," A DRAM OF SPIRITS. This is a comparatively modern word, dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The ' N.E.D.' suggests interrogatively a con- nexion with the nautical verb to caulk, the drink being " something to keep the wet out." This seems possible, yet the word is not nautical, but Scottish, as the examples

in the ' N.E.D.' show. I suggest that it belongs rather to Scot. can(l)k, to " rough " a horse in frosty weather, which is evi- dently cauguer, the Picard form of French chausser, to shoe, and thus ultimately from Latin calx, heel. In a small Scottish dic- tionary printed at Edinburgh in 1818 I find cawker, a frost nail ; also a glass of strong whisky, or other ardent spirits, taken in the morning." It seems a reasonable conjecture that the carter, after seeing that his horse was provided with cawkers, should playfully apply the same name to his own precaution against frost before starting.

ERNEST WEEKLEY. Nottingham.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

LATIN VICE-ADMIRALTY COMMISSIONS. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts has in press a volume to contain the royal com- missions issued to certain of the Crown officials of the Massachusetts Bay from 1681 to 1774. Of these, seventeen are commis- sions of the Governors as Vice- Admiral ; and of the seventeen, eleven (from 1685 to 1730) are in Latin, and the remaining six (from 1741 to 1774) are in English. What I wish to know is, When was English first used in such commissions ? Obviously it was between 1730 and 1741, but I wish exactness.

Under the heading ' Latin Law Pleadings,' a correspondent (at 11 S. i. 448, 495) asked when English was substituted for Latin in such pleadings, and SIR HARRY POLAND referred to the Act of 4 George II., ch. xxvi. (1731). This was

" An Act that all Proceedings in Courts of Justice within that Part of Great Britain called England, and in the Court of Exchequer in Scotland, shall be in the English Language " ; but section 3 reads as follows :

" Provided always, That nothing in this Act, nor any thing herein contained, shall extend to certifying beyond the Seas any Case or Proceed- ings in the Court of Admiralty ; but that in such Cases the Commissions and Proceedings may^be certified in Latin, as formerly they have been." ' Statutes at Large,' vi. 307-8. Clearly, therefore, the Act of 4 George II. is not the one I am in search of. In 1884 Sir Sherston Baker said that " the Patent was always written in Latin until the reign of George II." (' Office of the Vice- Admiral