Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/394

 386

NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. I. MAY 14, 9S.

to foist upon them any piece of absolute nonsense in Greek characters, even if it were as absurd as the following :

'Avdi a/cris ovTjaAA'

i craw aravTjtrav pr, "AvoV rj (ravei o-avrjcrav.

Which the ingenious reader will readily per- ceive to be :

I saw Esau kissing Kate,

And the fact is, we all three saw ;

For I saw Esau, 'e saw me,

And she saw I saw Esau.

PATEICK MAXWELL. Bath.

THE STANDING EGG. Did Filippo Brunel- leschi furnish a hint for Christopher Columbus ?

" proposed to all the masters, foreigners and com- patriots, that he who could make an egg stand upright on a piece of smooth marble should be appointed to build the cupola [of the Duomo, Florence], since in doing that his genius would be made manifest. They took an egg accordingly, and all those masters did their best to make it stand upright, but none discovered the method of doing so. VVherefore Filippo, being told that he might make it stand himself, took it daintily into his hand, gave the end of it a blow on the plane of the marble, and made it stand upright. Beholding this the artists loudly protested, exclaiming that they could all have done the same ; but Filippo replied laugh- ing that they might also know how to construct the cupola if they had seen the model and design." Vasari.

ST. SWITHIN.

REPORTS OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. Many of the readers of 'N. & Q.' have had occasion to consult one or other of the county reports issued by the Board of Agriculture in the latter years of the eighteenth and the early ones of the nineteenth century. They are useful for many purposes over and above those for which they were originally drawn up. There is hardly one of them which does not contain something or other about local customs and habits, which is valuable to us now, though I do not doubt there were many who considered such things very trivial at the time when the volumes were published. Dialect words, too, are to be found in many, and in some, I believe, they reach the dimen- sions of a glossary.

I learn from a paper on the Old Board of Agriculture, contributed by Sir Ernest Clarke to the March issue of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, that "every now and then there appear in booksellers' catalogues what are described as ' large-paper ' copies " of these reports. Sir Ernest points out that such description is a mistake. These volumes

are not large-paper copies, but imperfect drafts, printed on quarto paper, intended to be circulated among local people who took an intelligent interest in agriculture for the pur- pose of receiving corrections, and, I suppose, additions also. I have myself at various times examined several of these quartos and been puzzled by them not a little. From my memory of such as I have come across, they seem of inferior importance to the finished reports, but are by no means without inde- pendent interest of their own. Sir Ernest has published in his paper a table showing the authorship and date of the quarto draft reports as well as of the final series in octavo. This is a really valuable addition to our bibliographical literature. The reports for the Scotch counties have been tabulated in similar fashion, but the author has not thought it necessary to print his manuscript. This is to be regretted for several reasons. There are many persons who do not take any vivid interest in agriculture who are led from time to time, by various motives, to study these reports, and it is rather a hard- ship that so far as the Northern kingdom is concerned they should be left, as heretofore, to wander in darkness.

I doubt whether perfect sets of the two series of these interesting volumes exist in any of our great libraries, though I trust that the Royal Agricultural Society possesses them. EDWARD PEACOCK.

Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsey.

SHAKSPEARE'S THEATRE AT NEWINGTON BUTTS. The Daily News (9 April) professes to have identified the site of the theatre at Newington Butts where, it is believed, the Lord Chamberlain's players, of which com- pany Shakespeare is supposed to have been a member, acted for some time in 1594. The theatre is said to have " stood between Clock Passage, Newington Butts, Swan Place, and Hampton Street." No details are given, and the article concludes : " But if any doubt as to this identification remains, it could, we imagine, be finally settled by a reference to certain estate records, those of ' the King and Queen.'" This conclusion is not quite satisfactory, and the public would, I think, be glad to have some further reasons for identifying the site. JOHN HEBB.

Canonbury, N.

THE NAME "HAMISH." The use of "Ham- ish " as a " Christian " name appears to be on the increase ; and the fact that it is borne by a talented young musician is not likely to render it less popular. It is possible that Mr. William Black is responsible to seme