Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/333

 us. ix. APRIL 25,1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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scholar in a thousand knows the truth. And since we find the mistake in Strabo, the mistake must have been ancient, and have arisen from a careless study of the Greek masterpiece. Tibullus and Proper - tius perpetrate the same blunder, Ovid speaks of " pocula Lethes," and Virgil in Lethseumque domes placidas qui prsenatat amnem. If popular belief and current usage, and great examples, can make wrong right, then Plato was mistaken, and Lethe was a river, and not a plain, though he himself called it &> plain. And " Malo cum Platone ' errare*' " ! Andrews in his ' Latin-English Dictionary ' forms no exception to the rule of misunder- standing and misquotation. He says :
 * JEneid,' vi. 705, writes thus :

" The river Lethe in the infernal regions, from which the shades drank and obtained by it for- getf ulness of the past."

In a new and excellent novel, ' The Waters of Lethe,' we find the same canonized blunder. If the brilliant lady author had written instead * The Waters of Ameles,' she would have 'been right, but the title would have conveyed no meaning.

F. W. ORDE WARD.

[In Justice to Liddell and Scott we must men- tion that the article AT^T; in their ' Greek-English Lexicon ' ed. 1869, closes with the words : " but no river is called A 7^77 by the ancients."]

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

WALLER'S ' PANECYRICK.' The other day. in attempting to turn part of Waller's 4 Panegyrick to my Lord Protector ' into Latin verse, I was led to consider critically the couplet :

Ours is the harvest where the Indians mow, We plough the deep, and reap what others sow.

To what Indians does Waller refer ? The early settlers in America surely exported no corn in the tiny ships of the period ; nor, in the infancy of the East India Company, did we either get or need foodstuffs from India. The answer can hardly be that this is an instance of poetic licence or exaggera- tion, because the couplet is one of several in which the source of our supplies of spice, silk, wine, and gold is stated, not indeed prosaically, but accurately, and as matter of fact. B. B.

DE NUNE. I have a portrait, painted by De Nune, of Dr. James Lidderdale of St. Mary's Isle, 1733. Would any reader of ' N/& Q.' give me an account of his history or talents as a painter ? Please reply direct. (Mrs.) E. C. WIENHOLT.

10, Selborne Road, Hove.

WEATHER PROGNOSTICATIONS. According to Fan Ching-ta's ' Kwui-hai-yii-hang-chi,' written late in the twelfth century, the Lians, who then inhabited some parts of Southern China, used upon New Year's Day to draw prognostications of the months for the whole year. They put water into a series of twelve earthen cups, respectively named after the months, and stayed for the finishing of their headman's prayers. Then they went jointly to inspect them, and in- ferred therefrom the reigning weather of each month e.g., should the first cup be watery and the second cup empty, the first month was understood to be rainy and the second month dry. In Japan it was for- merly a custom with the Shinto priests of Atsuta to place a sealed pot of water some- where under the ground-floor of the temple every twelfth day of the first month. On the seventh of the next first month its contents were measured, their quantity being taken as an unerring indicator of abundance or paucity of the coming crops (Zeitschrift fur Japanische Volks- und Landeskunde, Tokyo, 10 Oct., 1913, p. 479). Also the ancient Japanese held the belief that the character of any year's harvest could be infallibly foretold from the thickness of ice examined upon New Year's Day (Prince Ichijo, ' Kuji Kongen,' 1422, chap. vi.).

In the northern city of Sendai there was a practice on the fourteenth night of every first month to leave in ashes twelve lighted coals in a series corresponding with the order of the twelve months, for the purpose of divining the predominant weather of each month of the year. They were looked into the following morning, when the coals repre- senting the dry months would be still living, whereas those denoting the rainy months would be perfectly cool (Ikku, jun., ' Oou Ichiran Dochu Hizakurige,' ser. iv. pt. iii., 1849). Some old people in this town (Tanabe) speak of their parents having used beans for the same purpose on the first night of every year. A dozen of them were put in one or two lines upon ashes, these being made to adjoin one or two rows of burning coals. Observing them in the following morning, the experimenter would predict