Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/291

 ii s. vi. SEPT. 21, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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JJofcs 0tt IBooks.

Catalogue of the Bnoks and Paper*, for the most part relating to the University, Town, and County of Cambridge, bequeathed to the University by John Willis Clark. Compiled by A. T. Bartholomew. (Cambridge University Press.)

IT seems to us that a bookish man could desire no better or more appropriate memorial than to have his name preserved in connexion with a great public library as the donor or founder of some special col- lection of books. We in London always think with a touch of kindness, which gilds him with respect, of Thomas Grenville, who "heard a great deal and imagined more," for his magnificent library of rare books as we fill in a British Museum slip with the letter G before the press-mark ; and the Rev. C. M. Cracherode becomes real to us as we handle one of his beloved bindings.

Mr. Willis Clark's collection of Cambridge books and papers will not only preserve his memory long after the generations which knew him have passed away, but they will also be a great addition to the University library. He began col- lecting in 1860, and continued adding to his store almost to his death. Besides Cambridge literature of all periods and'upon every subject, he was espe- cially interested in college architecture and in the growth of the collegiate system, and hence many books not of obvious Cambridge interest are included here. Taken as a Catalogue of Can- tabrigiana it would fall short of Mr. Madan's work on Oxford Printing, but this it does not pretend to be. It is notable for the number of broadsheets and fly-leaves marking the ephemeral controversies of the day which it has preserved.

The portrait of Mr. Clark, seated in the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral in the position a mediaeval scholar would have occupied, is one of the most characteristic we have seen, and though it has appeared before in his ' Care of Books,' we commend its choice for this volume. Mr. Clark made friends of every one with whom he came in contact, and his memory is prized by them all ; but no more useful and enduring monument to his memory has been raised than this very handsome hand-list of the books he bequeathed to the Univer- sity he served so long and so well.

Shotley Parish Records. " Suffolk Green Books,' No. XVI. (2). (Bury St. Edmunds, Paul & Mathew. )

As the writer says, Part I. of this volume is " as good as gold." It consists of raw materials i.e., of Fines, Inquisitions, Wills, and Lists of Shotley Taxpayers. Undoubtedly the most precious of these documents is the inquiry as to the age of Bartholomew Davelers of Erwarton, " taken before the King's escheator at Euer- warton. . . .on the Friday next before the feast of St. Martin in the second year of the reign of King Edward, son of King Edward." Twelve persons of ripe age the Visdelou of that day and a neighbouring landowner, with the rest humbler folk stated that they knew for a fact Bartholomew had been born and baptized on such and such days, one because he had gone to the hall for payment of a debt and found the

lady lying in childbed ; another because he was in the church, where he was having mass said for his father's soul, when the baby was baptized, and remembers seeing it lying in the church wrapt in a cloth of silk ; two others because children of their own were baptized at the same time, and so on. The wills, 83 in number, are many of them interesting, ranging from 1375 (Sir Thomas Visdelou's) to 1630 (Thomas Campell's).

The writer follows up his " raw materials " with chapters on the parish and its hamlets, on Shotley in Domesday, on the families the Vis- delous, Strattons, and Feltons who lived there, and on the Plantagenets at Shotley (1321, 1340), adding also various other curious matters, and supplying a number of interesting illustrations. We confess that we found his frequent facetious- ness a little tiresome ; but that makes no differ- ence to the fact that we have here a compendious collection of local information for which archae- ologists, genealogists, and other lovers of ancient- things may well be grateful. The Parish Registers have been put into a separate volume.

The People's Books (T. C. & E. C. Jack) do not restrict themselves to subjects, scientific or historical, which may be studied dispassionately ; they also- boldly handle the most burning of questions. Mr. J. H. Harley's Syndicalism is well-proportioned, well-written, and informing, and should prove useful in enabling people to get, at any rate, a- clear first notion of the nature of the movement.

Mr. W. A. Robertson's Insurance as a Means of Investment is workmanlike and instructive ; as he says, the array of examples here placed at our disposal is well worth careful consideration.

Dr. Alexander Bryce's Dietetics is a good piece of work, though it certainly reflects in a very candid manner the present condition of this branch of practical science^ hich is to say that it present* no little confusion. At the head of his Biblio- graphy the author puts Dr. Hutchison's ' Food and Dietetics ' as he says, the best book on the subject published in any English-speaking country. But a comparison between it and the little treatise before us will show what a number of new notions have cropped up and expanded in the interval Dr. Bryce gives an amount of detailed advice, surprising,, when we consider the small compass he nad to work in even providing recipes. On p. 49 is a recipe for macaroni au gratin, where we observed a rather amusing omission.

Prof. Leighton's Embryology is confessedly we think, to an all too great extent based upon the writings of Dr. Archdall Reid. The larger and infinitely varied biological interest of the subject is ignored. Half the book is taken up by a rambling account of the relation of the germ-cells to the soma full of repetitions in which, though Darwin's "Pangenesis" comes in for description and rejection,, we were astonished to find no allusion to Weis- mann. The description of the development of the embryo is curiously disproportioned here given in- great detail, here involved in a mass of words that convey but little, here showing notable omissions. Throughout runs a doctrinaire vein which seems out of place, and difficult questions, such as the origin of the human mind, are settled off-hand in a very airy way.