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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th B. x. OCT. n, 1902.

I refer to asphyxia and its verb asphyxiate. Now this word has in common practice been narrowed down to denote death by suffoca- tion only, such as that of miners from the effects of vitiated air, and yet, according to its etymology, it ought .to mean death from any cause, being, as it is, formed from alpha privative and cr^u^w, to pulsate, beat, throb, so that asphyxia strictly means merely the cessation of pulsation or what we call death. This being so, then, if A killed B by stabbing him to the heart, and had the word not un- accountably contracted its meaning, it would be correct to say that A had asphyxiated B, or to say that twenty thousand men were asphyxiated at Waterloo.

PATRICK MAXWELL. Bath.

WORDSWORTH AND KEATS. There appears to me to be a somewhat notable literary parallel between Wordsworth and Keats that has not hitherto been, so far as I am aware, remarked in print. I refer to the similarity of thought in a sonnet of Wordsworth ao- dressed to Sir George Beaumont and the main idea in the ode ' On a Grecian Urn.' Here are the particular lines of Wordsworth to which I allude ; they were written regard- ing a painting by Sir George Beaumont : Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape ; Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape, Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day ; Which stopped that band of travellers on their way, Ere they were lost within the shady wood ; And showed the bark upon the glassy flood For ever anchored in her sheltering bay.

These lines have no unsubstantial resem- blance to such a passage in Keats's ode as the following :

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; -Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, I hough winning near the goal yet, do not grieve bhe cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair ! It may be further pointed out that Words- worth s sonnet was written in August, 1811, and that Keats published no poetrv till several years after this date. W.* B.

DESCENT OP THE EARLS OF SHREWSBURY T^r B ? ^? ur indul 8 enc e I contributed to N. & Q some years ago a pedigree of the Dalrymples, Earls of Stair, venturing at the same time the assertion that the extra- ordinarily broken line of descent of that noble house was almost, if not quite, unique in the annals of the peerage. I have been interested lately, in some researches that I have had occasion to make into the history

of the ancient house of Talbot, to notice that the line of the Earls of Shrewsbury has followed an even more interrupted course than that of the Scottish Earls of Stair. Only twice, in fact, in the 239 years from 1617 to 1856, did a son succeed his father in the earldom i.e., in the case of the eleventh and twelfth earls : and no fewer than six out of the eight earls during this period died without surviving male issue to inherit their honours. The ninth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth earls were succeeded by their nephews, and the eighth and seventeenth by their more or less remote cousins.

In connexion with this I should like to point out a singular error in the recently published ' Life of Ambrose Phillips de Lisle of Garendon,' edited by his son. In a note to p. 338 the writer remarks :

" Bertram Talbot [seventeenth Earl] was the last Catholic and Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury. The present holders of the title are Chetwynds, Talbots only in the female line, and that extremely remote."

It is extraordinary how the writer came to make such a statement, which is exactly con- trary to the fact. The present (the twentieth) Earl of Shrewsbury traces his pedigree in unbroken male lineal descent, through John Talbot of Salwap (half-brother of the ninth earl), to John, second Earl of Shrewsbury, who died in 1460. Lord Shrewsbury's great- great-great-grandfather, John, younger son of the first Baron Talbot (Lord High Chan- cellor), married as his second wife Catherine, daughter and heiress of the second Viscount Chetwynd. His son, who inherited Ingestre Hall from his mother, was created Earl Talbot and Viscount Ingestre in 1784, and two years later prefixed to his patronymic of Talbot the name of Chetwynd, which is still borne by his successors and descendants.

D. OSWALD HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B. Fort Augustus, N.B.

PETUNIA. The name of this favourite flower is from French pe'tum,, tobacco, the origin of which has been so much disputed that the ' Century Dictionary ' shelters itself behind a non-committal "American Indian," without specifying whether North American or South American. Prof. Skeat, in his new book 'Notes on English Ety- mology,' p. 339, comes nearer to a solution. He says, F. pe"tun, an old name for tobacco ; said to be the Brazilian name for the same ; which may be doubted." The evidence which I have collected establishes the Brazilian etymology. Hans Stade, who was in Brazil from 1547 to 1555, speaks of u a herb which they call bittin" (in the Hakluyt Society's edition of his narrative, 1874, p. 147). The