Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/216

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

deep in the earth, and was thickly carpeted withinoss ; a road had to be cut through the forest to convey it to the coast. The block was moved by means of copper wheels that ran upoM a line of the same metal ; a hundred peasants were employed to work the cranes (Winden) and the Empress appeared in person in February, 1770, to encourage them in their Titanic undertaking. So interested was she in their efforts that she had a medal struck representing the operation and bearing the inscription: "Bordering upon folly." In the course of its journey the stone settled down comfortably five times in the lap of mother earth, but in the autumn it had reached the coast, where it was elevated on to a specially constructed jetty (Damm) and put upon a vessel that carried it close to the ?pot where it was destined to remain.

There are (or were) two pictures at the Hermitage representing the stone's journey and its arrival at its destination. I am indebted for the above facts to an account by Zabel (Leipsic, 1901) of the art treasures of the Russian capital. No reference is made there to the 80,000 horses mentioned by your correspondent.

T. PERCY ARMSTRONG.

Ihe Authors' Club, S.W.I.

. YALE AND HOBBS (12 S. vi. 130). A full account of the " lock controversy " will be found in Price's ' A Treatise on Fire and Thief-proof Depositories and Locks and Keys ' (1856). On p. 750 an extract is given from The Banker's Circular for June 22, 1850, which extract quotes The Ilion Independent to the effect that the Day & Newell lock, manufactured at .New York, commonly known as the " Hobbs lock," has at last been picked by Lynus Yale, jun., of the adjoining village of Newport. The report further gives the modus ope.randi of picking the lock. ARCHIBALD SPARKE.

WALTER HAMILTON, F.R.G.S. (12 S. v. 318 ; vi. 117). I missed the query at the first reference, and cannot just now refer to it. My regretted friend Walter Hamilton was not only the editor of Pro and Con but its principal writer and probably proprietor. His papers on the history of the English Poets Laureate began in No. 2 (Jan. 15, 1873) and continued throughout the volume. I do not know if W. B. H.'s note of Dec. 20, 1913, concerning Pro and Con has ever been answered, and so I reply to it now as far as I can. A new, enlarged, and greatly im- proved series of Pro and Con was started in January, 1874, but of this I have only

No. 1, and I do not know if it was continued- It is interesting to note a review in this, number of Morris's ' Earthly Paradise,' in which the writer, doubtless Walter Hamilton.' (although with the first number of the second volume the name of the editor ceases to be given), says of the poetry of Morris that "although now but little known, [it] will eventually rank with that of our first narrative poets. " W. ROBERTS.

BELT-BUCKLE PLATE AND MOTTO (12 S.. vi. 131). The motto " Auspicio Regis et Senatus Anglise " was that of the East India Company. The Company had an Ordnance Department in each of its three establish- ments at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.. The Departments were intimately connected with that of the Royal Artillery in their early days, between 1769, when they were originated, and 1821, when they were re- organized. They used the same shield of arms as a seal and departmental symbol, namely, three field guns, two and one, with the motto " Sua tela tonanti." This shield of arms is over the gate of the Department at Woolwich, and also over the old gate of the Department at Fort St. George on the Coromandel Coast. The motto of the East India Company on the buckle-plate seems to show that the owner and wearer of the buckle was connected with one of the Ordnance Departments of the Honourable Company. FRANK PENNY.

FINKLE STREET (12 S. v. 69, 109, 279; vi. 25, 114). The quotation from Prof.. Skeat given by DR. WHITEHEAD in no. 104 is a very interesting one. I would ask if he knows that in the ancient village of Cal- bourne in the Isle of Wight a Winkle Street still exists t

This fact is specially interesting, as- Calbourne meets the suggestion that streets thus named are found in places where the Danes are known to have made some settlement. Winkle Street at Calbourne fulfils the conditions of being " crooked " and "like an elbow"; and consisting of but a few old cottages it runs, after a sharp turn, by the side of the Bourne, which at its opening was entered by the Danes. The fine old seat of Swainston is in Calbourne Parish, and its name is said to have meant "Settlement of the Stranger."

The Saxon Chronicle tells us that, in the reign of Ethelred, the Danes, after plundering the mainland, " sailed with their booty to> the Isle of Wight,, where they lived at.