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NOTES AND QUERIES. [u s. ix. MAR. 21, 191*.

his possibilities as a miscellaneous author. On the other hand, if these metrical experi- ments represent the best he could do, his poetical knell is knolled, and he could not have produced Shakespeare's works.

THOMAS BAYNE.

THOMAS COCKING (11 S. ix. 69, 114). He was possibly father to W. Cocking who illustrated books, and signs some of the juvenile theatrical prints issued by Richard Lloyd, engraver and publisher, 1816-30. For example, I have a print entitled ' Mr. Ducrow as courier of St. Petersburgh,' plate 18, No. 2, published by R. Lloyd 23 June, 1830. It is an oblong folio signed " W. Cocking Del. R. Lloyd. Sc."

Another son m?y have been Robert Cocking, landscape painter, who lost his life in a descent of 5,000 ft. from a balloon, in a parachute of his own invention, 24 July, 1837, at the age of 61.

I shall be glad of information about any of the above, except Ducrow.

RALPH THOMAS.

BOTANY (11 S. vi. 368; vii. 72, 231 ; viii. 137). A case of sympathy and antipathy in the vegetable world is referred to by Guy de la Brosse, physician to Louis XIII. of France, in his work ' De la Nature, Vertu et Utilit6 des Plantes,' Paris, 1628. In his chapter dealing with the subject of whether plants have senses, he speaks of them (p. 63) as animated by

"un sentiment qu'elles ont les unes des autres, et par une hayne entr'elles ainsi que 1'antipathie es Animaux se fuyent et s'esloignent eomme la vigne le Choux, autant qu'elle ayme 1'Ormeau." However, on p. 509 he returns to the subject, and dismisses the idea that the vine loves the elm and hates the cabbage as a popular superstition. AGNES ARBEB.

Cambridge.

RED HAND OF ULSTER: CLASPED HANDS AS A RELIGIOUS SYMBOL (11 S. vii. 189, 275, 334, 373, 434; viii. 14, 95, 154, 217, 273 ; ix. 195). May a note be added to the statement quoted from The City Press of 31 Jan. last concerning the missing metal- gilt staff -head of St. Vedast, Foster Lane ?

The loss must have occurred since it was in the custodianship of the late Dr. Spar- row Simpson, for in 1894, when he was Rector of St. Vedast's, I well remember the care that was displayed when I was per- mitted to make a sketch of the staff for occasion being safely locked up in the vestry till my task was finished.
 * London Church Staves,' and on that

In the instance of St. Vedast's staff the device may merely have had reference to the union of that parish with St. Michael- le-Querne, as the inscription on the orb records that the staff was " The Gift of John Walker to the united Parishes of St. Michael- le-Querne and St. Vedast Foster, 1737."

M. S. T.

THE FIRST BARMAID (11 S. ix. 148, 197). Both bar and barmaid were familiar institutions in the coffee-house days of the early eighteenth century. Swift was accus- tomed to find his letters awaiting him at the St. James's Coffee-house, stuck in the glass frame behind the bar. The coffee- house bar was near the entrance, and was presided over by the barmaids of the day, who were grumbled at in an Addisonian Spectator as " idols," and were accused of paying more attention to customers who flirted with them than to older and more sober-minded folk. "Facetious" Tom Brown described them as "a charming Phillis or two, who invited you by their amorous glances into their smoaky terri- tories." G. L. APPERSON.

At 10 S. vi. 425 I supplied an illustration of the use of " Bar Maid " as a character in a comedy, ' The Fair Quaker of Deal ; or, The Humours of the Navy,' advertised in The Daily Post of 28 April, 1732, to be per- formed at the New Theatre in Goodman's Fields. ALFRED F. ROBBINS,

ALTARS (11 S. ix. 187). Perhaps the latest book upon this subject is ' Fifty Pictures of Gothic Altars,' selected and described by Percy Dearmer, M.A., published by Long- mans & Co., 39, Paternoster Row (1910). The examples given therein are all mediaeval, but the volume cannot be defined as an exhaustive one. HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

I have been told that the altar - slab in use at the church of Garsington, Oxford, is a pre - Reformation one, having been disinterred some years ago from the church- yard, where it had probably lain hidden since the changes in the sixteenth century.

F. S. SNELL.

15, The Burroughs, Hendon, N.W.

HERODOTUS AND ASTRONOMIC GEO- GRAPHY (11 S. ix. 191). As to a scientific reference to Herodotus, ii. 142, Stein and Abicht, in notes on this passage in their respective editions of Herodotus, each