Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/82

76  (11 S. xii. 443, 510; 12 S. i. 18, 38).—Another great and turbid river is the Tigris. At times the current is swift, and it seems to churn up the soil of the river-bed until one can almost believe that he hears it hiss. But the water is quite potable and innocuous. I have navigated the river from very near its source in the Kurdish mountains to its mouth in the Persian Gulf, and I have drunk gallons of it; indeed, I had no other. Among the Arabs of the Jezireh it is very highly esteemed, whether, for medicinal properties I know not; but it is (perhaps humorously) said that a dweller by the Tigris travelling to a distance from it will carry with him some Tigris soil to mix with the strange water he will have to put up with.

Dans la méthode rapportée par le bon Joinville, il semble que l'interprétation soit assez aisée. La masse des graines écrasées, mélangée intimement à l'eau impure, qui est d'une densité différente, doit former, en descendant vers le fond du vase, un fin réseau mobile qui se comporte exactement comme un filtre, avec cette différence, que c'est la liquide, ici, qui ne bouge pas, le tamis qui se meut d'un mouvement insensible.

Les graines fraîches contiennent, en outre, soit une huile essentielle, soit un mucilage qui pourraient bien agir comme les clarifiants connus des marchands de vin et des brasseurs français. Mais l'action mécanique des eaux courantes—"se méfier, dit-on, de l'eau qui dort"—et surtout celle des flèches sacrées du soleil sont, comme l'a signalé, les moyens les plus efficaces de purification pour l'eau des fleuves.

Un dernier effet des amandes pilées serait de donner à l'eau un léger aromate, fort agréable. Or, bien souvent les voyageurs, résignés ou contrainis à boire ces eaux de rencontre, paraissent demander, philosophiquement, qu'elles aient au moins une saveur qui les leur rende potables. Mes amis, au cours de leurs campagnes au Soudan ou en Cochinchine, employaient pour cela, m'ont ils raconté jadis, l'absinthe, la célèbre absinthe, qu'ils additionnaient ainsi, parfois, à des eaux bien extraordinaires! C'était aussi, d'après eux, la panacée uni- verselle contre la dyssenterie, le cholera, la typhoïde.… mais voilà bien la seule occasion où j'ai dû entendre, sans protester, l'éloge de la sinistre drogue, enfin proscrite en France et, j'espère, pour toujours.

(12 S. i. 28).—This work may be seen at the British Museum, where, I find, there are two editions of it as: Owen (Ashford), pseud. [i.e., Anna C. Ogle], 'A Lost Love,' London, 1855, 8vo; and new edition, London, 1862, 8vo.

(12 S. i. 29).—Arthur Hughes, whose death has just recently taken place, was born in London in 1832. An excellent criticism of his work appeared in The Athenæum for July 14, 1900, p. 64.

 (11 S. xii. 502 ; 12 S. i. 36).—Possibly the book has in mind is 'Facetiæ Cantabrigienses,' a collection of anecdotes, smart sayings, satirics, retorts, &c., by or relating to celebrated Cantabs, published by Charles Mason of Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, in 1836; it does not, however, contain the doggerel about the 'Patres Conscripti,' though in other respects it answers the description  gives of the book about which he inquires.

It is obvious, however, that the lines did not originate in Percival Leigh's 'Comic Latin Grammar" published in 1840 (which was largely made up of dog-Latin facetiæ already well known at that time), for in alluding to the 'Patres Conscripti' lines, cited ipsissimis verbis by and illustrated by a capital sketch by John Leech, he says:—

The 'Art of Pluck' was first published in 1835, the author adopting the pseudonym of "Scriblerus Redivivus"; but some eight years later his identity was disclosed as the Rev. Edward Caswell (not Caswall) in a letter addressed to his friend the Rev. Henry Formby, which he put in as a sort of apologia for having treated certain papers on divinity with unbecoming levity in the earlier editions, and before he had taken holy orders. One of the 'Critical Questions' in a facetious examination paper is as follows:—

Show the false quantities in these lines. Who are the tres patres supposed to have been? How