Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/188

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. A, so, 1902.

follow is one dated 14 July, 1297, calling on Walter Hakelute and Morgan ap Meredyth to choose 900 Welshmen of Glamorgan to go with the king from Winchelsea and fight his battles in parts beyond the sea.'" A selection of Augmentation Proceedings is followed by a second from the Glamorgan Plea Rolls. Some of these deal with cases of murder, as when 'David Gos is sentenced to be hanged for having abetted in giving John Came, gent, a mortal wound "with a 'gleyve of the value of 12 pence." One is not, of course, astonished at finding the same penalty of death awarded Jenkyn Dio for stealing eighteen cheeses of the value of 26,*. 8rf., and one jarful of honey of the value of 20cZ.

A sturdy vagrant named Thomas ap Hoeli is sentenced to be burnt with a hot iron through the gristle of the right ear, and to be afterwards whipped. Under ' Wills ' we find David William of Llanedern, 25 October, 1598, after bequeath- ing 2s. to the repair of Llandaff Bridge, and 124. to tithes negligently forgotten, leaving to his daughter his household stuff "(Except my best feather bedd w th his appurtenances, my best panne and my best brazen crocke)." Rinald Thomas, of Listleabout, leaves in 1636 "My wastcoate and hose that is next to the best, to my brother Morgan Thomas, together with my best shoes and stockines." Beds of all kinds are common articles of bequest. One phrase is "Item to Joseph East my second best oolster and pillow." Under ' Glamorgan County Records' it is said that a woman was flogged at Cardiff so late as 1753. Later instances may, we fancy, be advanced. Such entries are frequent as " This fell to pieces as fast as I could copy it.'' A very interesting portion of the volume consists of the 'Records of the Cordwainers and Glovers,' which cover a period of five hundred

Siars. Of the copies of tombstone inscriptions Mr. at thews says that many of them have been copied only in the nick of time. The illustrations, both full plates and head and tail pieces, are equally curious and valuable. Besides a striking and ex- cellent portrait of the third Marquess of Bute, the former include four views by Paul Sandby, executed doubtless when he was in the employ- ment of Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, and many other spirited designs. As Mr. Matthews says, the head and tail pieces, which are due to Mr. Thomas Henry Thomas, R.C.A., "are intensely Welsh and antiquarian." To the antiquary and the genealogist, and, indeed, to the historian, the progress made by the work is especially gratifying.

The Lesson of Evolution. By F. W. Hutton, F.R.S.

(Duckworth & Co.)

AT 9 th S. iv. 179 we reviewed ' Darwinism and Lamarckism,' by Mr. Hutton, which this little book of a hundred pages supplements by its two essays, one giving an account of the things evolution is teaching or ought to teach us, the other the geo- logical evidences which form the chain of inference from protozoa to man. The author has an admirable gift of lucid exposition, and his book may well be of great interest to the ordinary reader who is frightened by scientific terms. We are in general agreement with Mr. Button's account of the matter, though some debatable things are necessarily, in so brief a space, taken for granted. But we cannot admit that if science implies agnosticism, that result should cut science out of general education. Thought is free nowadays, we hope. Mr. Hutton says that

after studying evolution "Theism is left as the only possible theory of the universe." He rejects Pantheism, which he equates with Monism, pro- bably to the surprise of some philosophers. But there are disciples of evolution who recognize all its inferences in the physical world, and find no sure presumption of religion (we use the word m its widest sense) in their study. Their number is not small, and we think it far too much to sa^ that "scientific teaching has now come to Theism. We have, however, indicated our dissent from the definiteness of Mr. Hutton on such points in our previous review. Here is another point we should dispute. We read: "Birds and other animals are as happy as man. Civilized man cannot boast that he is happier than the savage." All this is debatable. We think oiirselves that the man of culture, with his superior sensibility, has greater pleasures and deeper sorrows than the chawbacon, still more than backward races. "Everything is hard upon the thinking man," as a clever novelist has said, still we would say with Milton :

Who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through Eternity ? The second essay is less interesting to the specula- tive mind than the first, but it will be useful to those who have no idea of the chain of evidence. Here there are gaps to be filled, problems to be solved. The ordinary reader will learn with sur- prise that man is, so far as we know at present, by no means " the last species of mammal to appear on the earth."

gotirrs to

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B. C. T. ("Mind your P's and Q's"). See 1 st S. iii., iv., and vi. passim ; 5 th S. v. 74, &c. " Though lost to sight to memory dear " is by George Linley, 1798-1865 ; see 6 th S. xi. 60, and indexes to ' N. & Q.' passim. So much has been written on these subjects we cannot reopen them.

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