Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/212

206} "."—This word was in common use in the book-trade in the early part of the nineteenth century, as is evidenced from the following extract from the Report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons which sat in 1802 to consider the reasons for the high price of paper:—

The above is taken from 'Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, 1793-1802,' vol. xiv. p. 165, col. 1. The document contains some very interesting particulars relating to conditions of the stationery and printing trades at the date above mentioned. Evidence was given by the representatives of at least two firms whose names are well known in the paper trade at this moment. The earliest quotation in the 'N.E.D.' illustrating this meaning of the word "remainder" is dated 1873.

 (See 11 S. ix. 481.)—During a recent visit to Australia I had, thanks to the kindness of Mr. W. H. Ifould, Principal Librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales, an opportunity of prosecuting a further search as to when the broad arrow was first stamped upon prisoners' clothing.

Although the date was not ascertained, the following two extracts, taken from The Sydney Gazette, are interesting, as they bear upon the subject of the desirability of a distinctive dress or badge being worn by the prisoners, and this is urged even as late as 1837:—

Speaking of the impropriety of permitting convicts to dress (in Sydney) in the preposterous manner hitherto allowed them, the writer goes on to state that

—According to Mr. T. F. Ordish, "the identity of the engraver who first produced this very fine picture of London requires elucidation" (London Topographical Record, vol. vi., 1909).

The view is signed "J. C. (or C. J.) Visscher delineavit," the three initials being combined in a monogram. Mr. Ordish assumed that the artist was "Nicholas John" Visscher, meaning thereby Claes Jansz Visscher, while according to Dr. Alfred v. Wurzbach's 'Niederlaendisches Kuenstler-Lexikon' (1910) the way the initials are placed and formed in a monogram seems to point to Jan Claesz Visscher, the father of Claes, who was busy at Amsterdam at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

I must point out that final z and sz stand for zoon (i.e., the son of). Hence, even if Mr. Ordish has picked out the right man, he