Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/20

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. ix. JAN. 3,

of her brother Thomas, and the children of her brother Robert. She wishes to be buried in the middle aisle of St. Giles's Church, near to the place " as where my brother John lieth." She mentions 4,5001. being due to the children of Sir George Wright her father from King James, and as confirmed by King Charles.

In none of these wills is there anything to show the relationship between Sir Robert ,nd Sir George Wright. They were certainly not brothers, as stated by Mr. Chancellor. In all probability Sir Robert was the son of Peter Wright of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, whose will (merely a memorandum), proved 1607, is as follows : "I give unto Robert Wright my son, for he is my heir, and he to use his brothers and sisters well." This Peter was most likely a brother of <3eorge, the uncle, and Thomas Wright of Cobham and St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, the father, of Sir George Wright of Rich- mond.

I have not seen the earlier wills referred to. A. STEPHENS DYER.

207, Kingston Road, Teddington.

" MARRIAGE" AS SURNAME (11 S. viii. 287, 336, 378, 457). As several correspond- ents have already suggested, the best -known English family of this name is the substantial Quaker one which has been settled for at least two and a half centuries in Essex. The ancestors of this family were Francis find Mary Marriage of Stebbing, who, as they registered the birth of a child born in 1657, must have been among the earliest- followers of George F"ox in the county. I believe the family claim an earlier Huguenot origin, from a refugee who spelt the name Manage. PERCEVAL LUCAS.

28, Orchard Street, W.

f ENGLISH AS SPOKEN IN DUBLIN (11 S. viii. 467). The proverb quoted by MR. A. L. MAYHEW is not uncommon amongst Irish people. It is meant to describe, epigrammatically, the sordid struggle under- gone, day by day, by the poor. It is especially employed as a warning against early or improvident marriages.

HERBERT B. CLAYTON. 39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

CROSS-LEGGED EFFIGIES (US. viii. 446). I have long thought that the cross-legged position is due solely to the artistic sense of the sculptors. The effigies look infinitely better so than with the legs stretched straight

out - J. T. FT

Durham.

FIRE AND NEW-BIRTH (US. viii. 325, 376, 418, 454). One of the common causes of this apparent anomaly is the presence of seeds lying dormant for long periods in the soil. Gardeners in this locality are careful not to burn their weeds and rubbish 011 garden-beds because of the resulting crop of new weeds from the fire-bed. They have a folk-saying, " One year's seeds bring three years' weeds." The germ of life within some of these tiny seed-atoms remains alive for surprising periods, as witness the wheat recovered some time ago from an Egyptian tomb thousands of years old, which germinated upon exposure to light and moisture.

Another cause is thought to be bacterial activity promoted by fire. Burning is believed by scientific gardeners to kill great quantities of harmful bacteria which prey on the nitrifying bacteria i.e., those which work on the nitrogenous elements, con- verting those elements into nitrates.

WILLIAM JAGGARD.

Strangely, no mention has yet been made of Sisymhrium Irio, London rocket, so called because it sprang up after the fire of 1666 ('Ency. Brit.,' llth ed., vii. 522A). Appearing not to have been noticed in London before, it seems then to have be- come more abundant there than in all Europe elsewhere. A smaller fire in Oxford in 1834 is said to have been followed by this plant.

Being no botanist, I have made no note of the many other growths follow ing burning over the soil, except in two Australian in- stances, remembered for extraneous reasons, viz.: (1) Acacias, known as "wattles," have a hard seed-coat which is softened by some obscure effect of fire, allowing seed to germinate ; the wattle-wood has a smell like raspberries, which, too, often grow 011 burnt lands, as suggested at p. 376. (2) Telo- pea speciosissima, " waratah," or native tulip, which frequently shows, rising out of the charcoal, great fire-like heads, 6 ft. or more above ground. This plant is ordinarily very hard to grow (' Cyclo. Airier. Horticulture,' vi. 1780).

Firing the bush, localized by the original note, seems to be an old African custom. The ' Periplus of Hanno,' of about 500 B.C., in sections 14-16, mentions this on the West Coast, and it is explained on p. 11 of notes in Schoff 's recent edition. ROCKINGHAM.

Boston, Mass.

[For mummy wheat see 9 S. i. 248: iv. 274; viii. 82, 170.] '