Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/315

 ii s. vi. SEPT. 28, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

2.59

of 1840 is for a bullet - pressing machine which was, and perhaps still is, used at Woolwich. I still hope that some of your readers may be able to furnish further details concerning David Napier.

B. B. P.

Jlobs an 1800ka.

Cambridge County Geographies. North Lanca- shire, by J. E. Marr ; Buckinghamshire, by 4 Morley Davies ; Northamptonshire, by M. W. Brown ; Midlothian, by A. McCallum. (Cambridge University Press. )

THESE four volumes well maintain the standard set up by former numbers. Dr. Marr's ' North Lancashire ' is among the best of them. TRe text is a good, straightforward piece of work, which does not shirk statement of necessary general facts, yet gives a good deal of informa- tion of a more detailed and advanced kind in easy language. We noticed a high proportion of satisfactory illustrations, among them the Geranium, sanguineum lancastriense of Walney Island.

The interest of ' Buckinghamshire ' is more predominantly domestic, and Dr. Morley Davies gives a satisfactory account of it with well- chosen pictures of the great and small houses of interest, the churches, and industries in progress. Commenting on the Icknield Way, he tells us that one of its striking features is the abundance of the "traveller's joy" and the " wayfaring tree," which, it seems, were thus {named from their nourishing conspicuously along the roads which follow the chalk escarpment. The " lynchets " at Cheddington cultivation- terraces produced at a time when hills were ploughed horizontally might have received fuller treat- ment. The rare or somewhat rare plants in Buckinghamshire are more numerous than might have been expected. Near Ellesborough, we are told, box-trees grow wild, and the pasque-llower may be found on the downs.

The natural history of ' Northamptonshire ' suggests at once the activities of Lord Lilford. Mr. Brown has some pleasant pictures of bird- scenes at Lilford, and tells us that the little Athene noctua originally introduced by the ornithologist, has been found as far away as Cambridge. The authors of these books take great pains to make clear and to illustrate the characters of the different periods of architecture, so that any one who possesses three or four numbers of the series can hardly help getting to know the bare elements of the subject. This may seem to the antiquary a very small affair ; but the ignorance in this regard among the mass of the people seems to us a thing particularly to be deplored, and this method of popularizing an elementary knowledge of it to promise more success than the ordinary guide-book or hand- book Northamptonshire furnishes several fine examples in the way both of churches and manor houses.

Mr. McCallum in ' Midlothian ' has a subject which, on the historical side, is too big for his canvas. He has wisely confined himself in this

part to what concerns the county as such. More interesting than the history is the account of the land itself and the people the widely famous agriculture, the fisheries, and the like. Mid- lothian, we are told, takes the first place among Scottish counties for wheat, barley, and hay ; the third for potatoes ; and the fifth for oats. Near Edinburgh Henry Prentice, about the middle of the eighteenth century, first tried the potato as a field-crop. The reader will duly find in these pages all the particulars connected with architecture, biography, administration, and the rest, which he would naturally look for in a book about Midlothian.

Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan. Translated and edited, with Preface, Introduc- tion, and Notes, by Sir Clements Markham. Second Series, No. XXVIII. (Hakluyt Society. )

THIS volume gives the contemporary accounts of four expeditions to the Strait of Magellan. The first of these dispatched, like that of Magellan, with the object of finding a western route to the Spice Islands, and taking possession of them for Spain was under the command of Loaysa, with Sebastian del Cano as his second, and started in 1525 with seven ships carrying 450 men. The extremely curious and interesting instructions to Loaysa form the first document given. Loaysa and Del Cano both perished in the Strait in 1526, and the two captains who succeeded them died in the two following years. In 1536 Fernando de la Torre got back to Spain with eight survivors. The story is told by Del Cano's friend Urdaneta, and following it is given the description of the Strait of Magellan by the pilot Uriarte. As an appendix to the report of this second voyage to the Strait we are given the story of the voyage of the pinnace Santiago, with its dramatic scene between the heroic Father Arreizaga and the Indians, and also the description by Vicencio of Naples of a search expedition to ascertain the fate of Loaysa's men a tale of fearful suffering.

Next we have the third voyage, again a dis- astrous one, commanded by Simon de Alcazaba, and reported by Alonso Veedor.

The fourth voyage was undertaken in 1540 by three small vessels, fitted out by the Bishop of Plasencia, and entrusted to Alonso de Camargo, whose instructions were to make out the possi- bility of communication by sea with Peru and Chile. This was successful in so far as the commander though he lost his own vessel got through the Strait on the third ship, and arrived at Callao ; but no account of his doings has been preserved. The fragment here given concerns the fortunes of the second ship part of the log of her captain, an unknown mariner who, as we gather from this, was the first to reach Staten Island and the Strait of Le Maire, and seems to have wintered in the Beagle Channel.

The last narrative takes us to the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Bartolome Garcia de Nodal and his brother Gonzalo were sent to verify the alleged discovery by the Dutch of a passage through the Strait of Le Maire and of Cape Horn, and to make a survey of the Magellan Strait. The first to circumnavigate Tierra del Fuego, the expedition of the two brothers was an excellent and successful piece of scientific work. They " never had a sick man " ; and " the time in which we have made this voyage