Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/578

 476 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.vm. JUNE 11,1921. LATIN PROVERB (12 S. viii. 432). Near: the beginning of a letter written to Curio ' in the year 53 B.C., Cicero says, " Tibi, etsi, j ubicumque es, ut scripsi ad te ante, in ^adem es navi, tamen, quod abes, gratulor " ( ' Ad Familiares,' ii. 5). About ten years later, when writing to Cornificius ( ' Ad | Fam.' xii. 25, 5), he says, again with refer- 1 ence to the political situation, " Una navis | ^st iam bonorum omnium." R. Y. Tyrrell ! compares the corresponding phrase of | Demosthenes (319, 8), eVi rrjs auT^s j (dyKvpas) 6pp.clv rots TroXXots-. The metaphor of | the " ship of state " is familiar in more than j one language, even if not " in all languages," | as Tyrrell and Purser's note would have it. ' Otto, ' Sprichworter der Romer,' quotes from Livy, xliv. 22, 12, " Qui in eodem velut navigio participes sunt periculi." EDWARD BENSLY. University College, Aberystwyth. GIBBON : REFERENCE WANTED (12 S. viii. 431). The words quoted come from the seventy-first chapter of the ' Decline and Fall,' where Gibbon discerns " four principal causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years," the first being the injuries of time and nature. Dealing, under this -head, with the danger of frequent in- undations to which Rome was exposed, he writes : The servitude of rhers is the noblest and most important victory which man has obtained over the licentiousness of nature ; and, if such were the ravages of the Tiber under a firm and active government, what could oppose, or who. can enumerate, the injuries of the city after the fall of the Western Empire ? In a marginal note Gibbon sends his readers to the ' Epoques de la Nature ' of the eloquent and philosophic Buff on. His picture of Guyana in South America is that of a new and savage land, in which the waters are abandoned to themselves, without being regulated by human industry. EDWARD BENSLY. JOHN WINTHROP : INNER TEMPLE, 1628 (12 S. viii. 391). According to Mr. Thomas Seccombe in the ' D.N.B.' the elder John Winthrop " appears to have been ad- mitted of the Inner Temple in November, 1628 (' Members of Inner Temple,' p. 252)," while the late Mr. J. A. Doyle in his life of the -son says that the latter was admitted of the Inner Temple in November, 1624, giving as his authority ' List of Students Admitted, 1547-1660,' p. 241. EDWARD BENSLY. TERCENTENARY HANDLIST or NEWS- PAPERS (12 S. viii. 38, 91, 173, 252 ; see vii. 480). I am indebted to Mr. H. Tapley- Soper for the following information as to a West-country paper not in the ' Handlist,' and not, I think, generally known. It is entitled Richard's Topsham Herald and General Advertiser for South and East Devon. An extant issue is dated Thursday, Sept. 29, 1864, price one penny, and consists of four pages, with the imprint (on the back), " Printed and Published for the Proprietor, R. Richards of 4, Strand, in the Parish of Topsham, on Thursday, September 29, 1864." The pages are not numbered, but the issue appears complete. Richards was a printer in a small way of business, and also kept a shop at which he sold tobacco, stationery, and other sundries. The paper seems to have run for two or three years. NORAH RICHARDSON. FRANKLIN NIGHTS (OR DAYS) (12 S. viii. 411). These are, no doubt, our old friends " the three Ice-saints of May " who make their appearance from time to time in ' N. & Q.' I believe that I can add one item of information to what has been already given. In Russia the peasants say that at the end of spring a cold wind blows and that it is caused by the budding of the oaks. Tolstoi discusses this curious instance of cause and effect in the second chapter of the third part of his great epic, ' War and Peace.' For many years I have been in the habit of watching for the coming of these saints not in ' N. & Q.' but outside, and my experience is that all that can be safely affirmed is that some time in May there is a sudden spell of sharp cold. This year it came on the 28th, whereas St. Mamertus, the first of the " Icemen," has his feast kept on the llth. In Southern Germany the spell is later than in the North. The French have a popular saying, " Mi-mai, queue d'hiver." According to Reclus there is in Siberia a swift apparition of spring, unsurpassed in the world for beauty, but it is followed by a set-back that occurs about the 20th. The sudden fall of temperature in Western Europe appears to be due to the blowing of the wind from Greenland and Labrador, where, owing to the thaw within the Arctic circle, there is an unusually large quantity of ice. In Siberia it has probably a different cause. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG.