Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/183

 12 S. III. MARCH 3, 1917.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

177

Arrival in Africa to the Period of his Death. II. A Description of the English Settlements on the River Gambia. III. Appendix containing Geological and Botanical Descriptions and Trans- lations from the Arabic."

MICHAEL F. J. MCDONNELL. Bathurst, Gambia, British West Africa.

[The notice of Bowdich in the ' Diet. Nat. Biog.' says : " He succumbed at the early age of thirty- three, on 10 Jan. 1824." But the opening lines of the article state that he was " born at Bristol 20 June 1791 " ; so that he was really thirty-two years old at the time ol his death, if the ' D. N. B.' is correct as to the date of his birth.]

In the quiet and little-known Passy cemetery, raised high above the Place du Trocadero, Paris, is the grave of an author -of some fame. The epitaph is :

In Memoriam Eustatii Clare Grenville Murray

Comitis de Rethel d'Aragon Ricardi Plantagenet, Ducis de Buckingham

et Chandos et Henricae Annae Marquisse Strozzi

Filii

Natus dii Oct. xvi. 1810. Ob. Dec. xx. 1881. Qui seminant in lacrymis in exultatione metent.

Viri Egregi

Clara Comitissa Rethel d'Aragon

UXOB 8UA

Erexit.

EDWARD NICHOLSON. Nice.

WITCHCRAFT : THE CASE OF MRS. HICKS (12 S. ii. 521). Speaking of 'The whole Trial and Examination of Mrs. Mary Hicks,' MR. NORRIS says :

" It is most singular that it should have been in this library [the Bodleian] for a period of over a hundred years without being identified, eluding all the above researchers."

It did not elude Dr. Wallace Notestein, who examined it at the Bodleian, and six years ago pronounced it, like the two Northamptonshire pamphlets of 1705, a fictitious narrative (see his ' History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718,' pp. 375-83). This important work, pub- .lished by the American Historical Associa- tion at Washington in 1911, is apparently not known to English scholars.

ALBERT MATTHEWS.

Boston, U.S.

ENGLISH COLLOQUIAL SIMILES (12 S. iii. 27, 50, 77. 116). I send the following similes in case they should be thought suitable for ' N. & Q.'

"As dry as David's heart." Used this 'morning by a maid (a native of Oxford- shire) in reference to handkerchiefs which had been washed.

" As happy as a prince." Said by an old man (1912) who had been elected to an almshouse at Harbledown, Kent.

" As fresh as a daisy." This comes into an old Oxfordshire song, the first verse of which is as follows :

By Jove, you makes your dumplings fine,

I think I'd like to try 'em ; And asks you if you'd marry a chap,

A rusty (?) chap like I am. For I can milk a cow and drive a plough,

And reap and sow As fresh as a daisy in a field ;

They calls I Buttercup Joe.

Perhaps some reader would be able to give the rest of the song.

JOANE M. B. STEVENS. The White House, Eynsham, Oxon.

I have heard " slow as molasses in January " several times in the United States. Molasses, being viscous, flows slowly ; more viscous when cold ; January usually cold. Hence the meaning.

ALFRED S. E. ACKERMANN.

PHILIP WINTON, alias SETON (12 S. ii. 416 ; iii. 57). If W. R. W. will refer again to the third paragraph in my note at ii. 416, he will find I did not state that Philip Winton held a commission in the 4th Foot in 1772, but that " his regiment (presumably the 4th or King's Own Regiment of Foot) was then stationed at Dumfries." I had already searched the Army Lists for 1770-75, and also the Muster Rolls of that regiment (which was quartered at Dumfries from June 23, 1772, to March, 1773), without finding any mention of his name ; and yet James Winton was evidently under the impression that his father was in the regi- ment stationed there at that date. For, in a letter to the minister of Dumfries, dated Aug. 27, 1847, he writes :

" At the tune of my Birth there was an English Regiment quartered at Dumfries, and if that can be ascertained there is no Necessity to search further than from the 5th of December, 1772, to the period of their quitting Dumfries .... which probably would not be long. . . .as from Circum- stances that I know it could not be more than two Years."

Now it appears from Cannon's ' Historical Record of the Fourth, or the King's Own, Regiment of Foot ' that " in 1768 the King's Own proceeded to Scotland, where they were stationed during the four suc- ceeding years, but returned to England in the spring of 1773," and embarked for service in North America, April 17, 1774. And, from the ' Monthly Returns of Five Regiments of Foot quartered in North