Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/412

 338 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. x. ^ 1922. in. 1818, His portrait is in. the possession of Lady Cope. There may have been a pre- vious marriage between, Jaffray and Nichol- son,, as Alexander Jaffray had ten children by his wife, Christian Barclay of Urie. Christian, granddau. of Alexander Jaffray, married Robertson the miniaturist. I fancy some curious brown miniatures in Lady Cope's possession are by him. We have the printed Diary of Alexander Jaffray the Quaker. E. E. COPE. Finchampstead Place, Berks. There is a slight error or omission in MB. FULLER'S note on General Nicholson's birthplace. The Rev. Edward Maxwell's incumbency was at " High Roding," not " Roding." There are some seven or eight places near Dunmow or Ongar all of which have " Roding " as part of their names. I can remember that, when on a visit at Mr. Edward Maxwell's house in 1869, I was told by his wife, the General's sister, how masterful John Nicholson was as a boy how he would make his sisters carry him upstairs on their back. L. ELIOT. LIEUT. -CoL. CLEMENT MARTIN EDWARDS (12 S. x. 211, v.s. ' General Clement Edwards, C.B.'). This officer left Ceylon with Sir. Thomas Maitland, the retiring Governor, on whose staff in Ceylon he had been, and who had a high opinion of him, and whom he accompanied to Malta in 1811. According to Ceylon records he was ap- pointed Lieutenant -Colonel of the 1st Ceylon Regiment (not the " Ceylon Rifle Regiment," which did not receive that title until a dozen years later) on July 10, 1816, in succession to Viscount Molesworth, drowned in the wreck of the Arniston in May, 1815. He married a daughter of the Very Rev. Charles Peter Layard, Dean of Bristol, who had two sons, Henry Peter John and Charles Edward, in the Ceylon Civil Service. H. P. J. Layard became the father of " Nineveh " Layard., It was probably " at the early age of twenty -six " that Clement Martin Edwards joined Ramsay's Regiment (the 2nd Ceylon Regiment) as a captain in 1805. But, if so, when he became Lieutenant -Colonel of the 3rd Ceylon Regiment in 1813, he was thirty-four (see p. 212). With regard to his appointment to a Lieutenant-Colonelcy in the 1st Ceylon, it appears to have been gazetted too late, as he died on May 4, 1816. But possibly the date should be 1815, not " 1816.'' PENRV LEWIS. THE ENGLISH "H " : CELTIC, LATIN AND GERMAN INFLUENCES (12 S. x. 32, 116, 172). In Cingalese the letters s and h at the beginning of a word are often inter- changeable, thus hatara or haya or sa?/a=six ; hitiya or &c. Cingalese is an Indo-European lan- guage, based on Sancrit. Tamil, which has been classed as a Dravi- dian language, has no h, but the letter * at the beginning of a word is pronounced like an s or like ch in cheese. There are some Sanscrit words in Tamil. For in- stance, the word hena in Cingalese, meaning low jungle where the forest has been felled, is found in Tamil as chenai ; hettiya in, Cingalese (the name of a caste) is chetti in Tamil, &c. PENRY LEWIS. WAINWRIGHT'S POEM ON HIS MURDER OF HARRIET LANE (12 S. x. 251).- -I cannot recall a poem sold to the public on the day of Henry Wainwright's execution as being written by the culprit ; but I well remember I a copy of doggerel verses then hawked in Now Harriet Lane has gone to heaven, And Wainwright's gone to hell - j an assertion sufficiently positive to satisfy i the strictest theologian of the oldest i school. ALFRED ROBBINS. BURR- WALNUT (12 S. x. 191, 238). The I black walnut of America, one of the most valuable of woods for cabinet-making, commonly grows with straight grain, but often shows -'' shakes " or knots deemed ornamental. What is meant, however, by " bur- walnut " is the wood cut in thin veneers from, irregular burls or excrescences that frequently show in swollen, more or less globular, portions of the trunk of this- tree, Juglans nigra. " Burl- walnut," or " walnut burl," is a more accurate term. The grain of these burls is often much contorted and is regarded as beautiful. The term " bur-oak " has probably misled MR. SMITH. This is the mossy-cup or overcup oak, Quercus macrocarpa, of America and it3 bur (or burr) is on the acorn. C. E. HUTCHINGS. 3667, Shenandoah Avenue, St. Louis, U.S.A. ' EARLY FIRE-ENGINES (12 S. x. 286).-- The inscription " Sun Fire Office, 1710," is ! the date of the founding of the company, ! and not the date of the presentation of the fire-engine, which was probably in the late eighteenth century, subsequent to 1753,
 * London streets, which contained the lines : -