Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/70

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. v. MARCH,

[ AVIATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Some day the would-be historian of flying will be searching the indexes of ' N. & Q.' for antiquarian lore on the subject. He will find the following singularly prophetic verses in a quarto pamphlet entitled ' The Scrib- leriad: an Heroic Poem' (R. Dodsley, 1751). The anonymous writer was Richard Owen Cambridge (see book iv. p. 15) :

Let brisker youths their active nerves prepare, Fit their light silken wings and skim the buxom air.



Mov'd by my words, two youths of equal fire

Spring from the crowd and to the prize aspire : The one, a German, of distinguished fame ;

His rival from projecting Britain came. They spread their wings, and with a rising bound

Swift at the word, together quit the ground. The Briton's rapid flight outstrips the wind ;

The lab'ring German urges close behind, As some slight bark pursu'd by ships of force

St'-etches each sail to swell her swifter course. The nimble Briton from his rival flies,

And soars on bolder pinions to the skies. Sudden the string, which bound his plumage, broke ;

His naked arms in yielding air he shook. His naked arms no more support his weight,

But fail him ; sinking from his airy height, Yet as he falls so chance, or fate, decreed

His rival near urged his winged speed Not unobserv'd (despair suggests a thought) :

Fast by the foot the heedless youth he caught, And drew the insulting victor to the ground

While rocks and woods with loud applause resound.

The word " insulting" is obviously a mis- print in the original for " exulting."

There is a full -page copperplate frontis- piece depicting the rivals in mid-air, while a large crowd of learned savants watch the race. The Englishman flies by means of a pair of fluted fans attached to his shoulder- blades, and working on a kind of swivel or ball -jointed socket. The German bears on each shoulder a long rod, at each end of which is a species of inverted bricklayer's hod. That an airman could fly by means of either apparatus calls for considerable imagination. W. JAGGABD, Capt.

4 London Wall Buildings, E.C.2.

INSCRIPTION ON SEAL. (See 9 S. ix. 329.) A query remains alive until it has had its note. The legend concerning which MB. E. MONTEITH MACPHAIL inquired in 1902 is in the language of Tonga, and may be readily recovered in the queried form ofa taitoogoo from the vocabulary in the second volume of Mariner. The language has since been standardized, and the or- thography improved over Mariner's rather

creditable effort a century ago. In the vocabulary of the Rev. Shirley Waldemar Baker, a most remarkable missionary, we find ofa taetuku as love everlasting. Ofa properly designates a set of emotions which find a pneumogastric reaction love, but quite as much grief and compassion ; the second word is composite of the negative tae (not a pure diphthong, but a glide of the two vowels with Italian phonetic value) and of tuku, to cease.

WILLIAM CHURCHILL. Cosmos Club, Washington, B.C.

[MB. MACPHAIL, from whom we were glad to insert a reply last month (p. 48), will doubtless be grateful to our American correspondent ior now answering his query of so many years ago.]

JOHN FLAMSTEED : DR. EDMOND HALLEY. I am indebted to Mr. Ralph J. Beevor, of Reymerston, Manor Road, St. Albane r for the extracts given below from Baily's
 * Life of Flamsteed ' (London, 1835) :

" A correspondence began with Mr. Bossley, an. apothecary of Bakewell in Derbyshire, and Mr. Luke Leigh, a poor kinsman of Mr. Bailey's, of the same clan, and myself [1696]." P. 63.

" Mr. Leigh I hired to calculate the places of the fixed stars." P. 64.

" 1712, June 18. Dr. Bailey came, and brought his wife, son, and daughter with him." P. 229.

"Mar. 8, 1704/5. Letter from Mr. Flamsteed to Mr. Bossley. ' I received a letter from Mr. Leigh a great while ago to acknowledge the receipt of a relief I sent him to support him in his sickness.' "P. 236.

Mr. Beevor expresses the opinion that the word " clan " in the earliest of the above extracts, which he was at first in- clined to treat as a synonym of " place " (Bakewell), may, perhaps, be used as a synonym for " profession " or " calling," and imply only that Luke Leigh also was an apothecary. " In any case it seems pretty clear that he was of Derbyshire."

The register of Bakewell can hardly fail to give some Halley information.

EUGENE F. McPiKE.

4450 Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, 111.

MB. JUSTICE MAULE ON * BIGAMY AND DIVOBCE. Readers of legal ana are familiar with the severe satire on the law of divorce as it then existed which was embodied by the above judge (see ante, p. 7) in a nominal sentence for bigamy. The ' D.N.B.' places this at Warwick Assizes, so far agreeing with the detailed account in Walton's ' Random Recollections of the Midland Circuit' (1869), where the spring of 1845