Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/622

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NOTES AND QUERIES. m s. vi. DEC. -28, 1912.

rector of Winchfield, near Parnham, and the Ilev. Mr. John Pretty, rector of Parley, near Win- chester, to the last of whom, and his distinguish- ing generosity and kindness to me upon the death <>f my father, my continuance and advancement in this colledge is principally owing."

The Rev. John Pretty he nominates as one of the executors of his will.

There is a short account of .Robert Greene in the ' D.N.B.,' but we are told nothing of the principles of his wonderful philosophy. AXEYN LYELL READE.

Treleaven House, Blundellsands.

EARTH-EATING (11 S. vi. 290, 351, 397). Terashima's 'Wakan Sansai Dzue,' 1713, torn, xiv., quotes a Chinese cyclopaedia,


 * San-tsai-tu-hwui,' 1607, to this effect :

" The land of Wu-ki [literally, Xo Viscera] lies in the North Sea ; its inhabitants have no riscera, eat earth, and live in the pits. When any one of them dies, he is buried ; his heart, his knee, and his liver never rot, each turning into a man after remaining underground respectively for one hundred, one hundred and twenty, and eighty years."

The same Japanese work, torn. Ixi., gives the following quotation from the Chinese

ing what appear to have been some edible earths :
 * System of Materia Medica,' 1578, concern-

" Mineral Plour (Shih-mien) comes not out at all times ; some people say its appearance is auspicious, but others opine it to be found only in years of famine. According to the Chinese historical writings, A.D. 744 saw a vinous spring make its start and some stones turned into flour ; stones became flour in the year 809 ; a ' mineral fat ' resembling flour presented itself in 1012 ; stones produced Hour, 1001 and 1080. All these were eaten by poor folks."

The Imperial Chinese encyclopaedia, 'Yuen- kien-lui-han, ! 1703, torn, xxiv., contains the following accounts :

" In the second month, 740, the people of three circuits in Hwui-chau used to eat a certain earth, which, they said, tasted far superior to all other earths. Some time previously the poor women of Wu-teh were deliberating to- gether how to outlive the then devastating famine, when an aged passer-by advised them to eat the earth beside a ditch close at hand. Scarcely had he vanished on a sudden, when they found it very savoury to the taste. Mixed well with Hour and made into cakes, the earth proved a really excellent food. After this news people crowded there from near and distant villages, and the edible earth was soon exhausted.

" Mount Loh-yung in the province of Yun-nan produces an earth which is of good flavour, and can be eaten when made into cakes and baked. The women of the barbaric Pu tribe are particu- larly fond of it.

" A fissure in a dale in the Wu-tang Mountains has its soil coloured fresh yellow and esculent."

Bennett and Murray, in their ' Hand- book of Cryptogamic Botany,' 1889, p. 424, state :

" In some countries, such as China, Japan, Siberia, Lapland, &c., they [the fossilized siliceous shells of diatoms] form, cemented together by salts of lime, the edible earths which are mixed with meal to make a kind of flour."

It is a well-known fact that some Japanese Ainus vised, on occasions of scarcity, to feed upon a paste composed of such a diato- maceous earth and the starch which they extracted from the roots of a Fumaria.

" The Indians [of Guatemala] have a habit of consuming a yellowish edible earth containing sulphur ; on pilgrimages they obtain images moulded of this earth at the shrines they visit, and eat the iihages as a prophylactic against disease." ' Encyc. Brit.' (llth ed.), xii. 662.

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

THE RITES OF THE CHURCH (11 S. vi. 448). " Rites^of the Church " is, I think, the best English equivalent of jura ecclesi- astica in the connexion to which DR. SHARPE refers, though undoubtedly jura means "rights," and not "rites." The rights are not the rights of the Church, but the right of the dying man to have administered to him upon certain conditions, of course the rites of the Church; in this con- nexion the last Sacraments. The adminis- tration of these might have important civil consequences. If DR. SHARPE be not already acquainted with it, he may be interested in the following dictum of Berewik, J., quoted from 'The Eyre of Kent of 6 and 7 Ed- ward II.' (Selden Society), i. 112 :

" Si interfectus habeat jura ecclesiastica non est necesse quod coronator eum videat nee in itinere non debet inde fieri inventor."

W. C. BORLAND.

Common Room, Lincoln's Inn.

REV. DAVID GEORGE- GOYDER, F.E.S. (11 S. vi. 450). He published in 1857 'My Battle for Life : the Autobiography of a Phrenologist,' wherein he mentions (p. 12) " Gwydyr House, of the proprietor of which I believe I am some hundred-and-fifty- sixth cousin." He died on 29 June, 1878, " having attained the age of eighty- two years." These and other biographical facts appear in an obituary notice of him pub- lished in the monthly periodical The Intel- lectual Repository for August, 1878, pp. 404- 408. If your correspondent is still un- satisfied, perhaps he will write direct to me. CHARLES HIGHAM.

169, Grove Lane, S.E.

[MR. DAVID SALMON thanked for reply.]