Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/368

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

S. N 18., MAT 3. '56.

ceptable to MR. FRASER, but worth preserving in your valuable miscellany.

When Mr. Britton was in the West collecting materials for his well-known work The Beauties of England and Wales, Mr. Scaddon, among other more trustworthy information, told him that an epitaph in Cornish was to be found in Paul Churchyard, and on Mr. Britton expressing a desire for a copy, he undertook to procure it for him; and "to save his credit concocted, with the assistance of Pryce's Grammar and Vocabulary of the Cornish Language, the lines to the memory of Doll Pentreath. The ingenious fabrication was discovered in time to prevent Mr. Britton giving them to the world, but the actual existence of the epitaph has since been erroneously stated in various works on Cornwall.

Dolly died in 1777, at the advanced age of ninety-one, and her burial is thus noticed in the register of Paul parish :

"Dorothy Jeffery was buried December 27. This is the famous Dolly Pentreath (her maiden name) spoken of by Daines Barrington in the Archceologiu."

Although few could converse in the Cornish language when this learned antiquary made his visit in 1768, yet it must have been still far from extinct, as I find from some manuscript memoirs left by my father, who was born in 1763, that he was taught when a child the Lord's Prayer, &c. in the old tongue.

It is rather a curious coincidence that of the three dialects which sprung from the ancient British, viz. the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Ar- moric, the Cornish should have lingered longest in the parish of Paul, and that the Armoric should now be chiefly spoken in the neighbourhood of St. Pol de Leon in Brittany. I spent a consider- able time there in 1816-17, and well remember my surprise at hearing some Welsh women con- versing with the peasants in the market in their own patois, the radicals being so alike that they could understand each other without much dif- ficulty. There can be little doubt that Brittany was peopled from Cornwall : the similarity in the names of places bears ample testimony to their common origin. JOHN J. A, BOASE.

Alverton Vean, Penzanca

HOOK-WORMS. (2 na S. i. 143. 244.)

I must not let my Query, regarding this pest, pass without another Note ; for the subject, like an old tune, may be much benefited by a little "ventilation." It is for lack of readers, for want of air and light, that moths and book-worms hold tmdivided sway.

By your fair correspondent I must stand repri- manded for not visiting the great national institu-

tion in Great Russell Street, ere I troubled your pages. Had I done so, without her kind aid, I fear it would have been to visit the library rather than the Natural History department to witness an effect rather than discover its author. That there is one sort of book-worm for covers, and another for paper, I cannot think true : for we find all substances, wood, paper, and leather, pierced indiscriminately.

To J. F. M. I tender my best thanks, and send some specimens of different leathers, kindly for- warded by Messrs. J. and J. Leighton, book- binders, of Brewer Street, as tests to destroy book-worms. They are prepared with corrosive sublimate and colocynth, as recommended by one of our first chemists. I should feel much pleased by J. F. M., or any other "game preservers," if they would introduce samples of papers and leathers so prepared amongst their live-stock, and note the effects in some future numbers of the " N. & Q." LUKE LIMNER, F.S.A.

" To give these mites a disrelish for books, the paste which the binders make use of, and which is supposed chiefly to attract them, has often been mingled with bitter substances, as wormwood, coloquintida, &c. without any success. Mineral salts, to which all insects have an aversion, afford the only remedy. The salt called arcanum duplicatum, allum, and vitriol, are proper for this purpose. By mingling therefore a small quantity of any of these mineral salts in the paste, books will be effectually pre- served from the attacks of all sorts of worms and insects.

" M. Prediger, in his Instructions to Bookbinders, printed at Leipsic, in the German language in 1741, says, that if binders were to make their paste of starch instead of flour, worms would not touch the books. He also directs pul- verised allum mixed with a little fine pepper, to be strewed between the book and the cover, and also upon the shelves of the library; and for the more effectual preservation of the books in libraries, he advises rubbing the books well, in the months of March, July, and Sep- tember, with a woollen cloth dipped in powdered allum. And it were to be wished that for the future all book- binders would make their paste in the manner recom- mended ; but I would not advise depending upon starch without any admixture of mineral salts," Gentleman's Magazine, Feb. 1754, p. 73.

" Sir John Thorold (one of the first-rate bibliomaniacs during the time of the Pinelli sale) used to be very par- ticular (so Mr. Payne informs me) in his directions to the binder respecting a due portion of alum in the paste ; and I am credibly informed by a gentleman, who, a few years ago had some books bound by two different binders at Vienna, that one set engendered the book-worm, and the other did not. Thus Mr. Prediger discourses rationally in his Instructions to German Book-binders. There is no doubt, I apprehend, that hog-skin binding is more favour- able to the breed of the 'book-worm than any other species ; and this discovery is exclusively due to the Eustathim of the day ! Mr. Douce has also a melancholy proof of the worm-nutritive powers of hog-skin, in an old MS. lately bound by Hering in that species of coverture." Dr. Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron, vol. ii. p. 446.

It is said that worms seldom attack books printed upon English-made paper ?

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.