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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. XIL NOV. 23, im.

It is really an enclosed wharf, open at the sea end, connected with, and being ^ the court of, a private house or business premises. It is still common in Lerwick, Shetland, where many of the houses abut on and are built partly into the sea. The emphasis is on the first syllable, the other two being short. J. L- ANDERSON.

Edinburgh.

MEMORY (9 th S. xii. 224, 311, 333). Memory, according to my personal experience, does not depend specially on one sense. With me oral impressions are very uncertain, and some classes of visual ones are singularly weak. My power of recollection may be described as sporadic and quite incalculable. Certainly the interest I take in a subject gives little aid. I have, for instance, a hopelessly bad memory for grammatical construction, but not so bad a one for the vocabulary of a language. My mind will not fasten on arithmetic, or even on isolated figures ; hence I cannot, even ^ after giving conscious attention to the point, recollect at what page of a book I have left off reading, yet I rarely forget what part of a page a paragraph I wish to find occupies. The con- trary form of this memory appeared in a young girl of defective brain whom I once knew. She could never give any account of the stories she read, and probably did not retain one sentence while perusing the next, yet she always remembered at what page she had closed the book.

It is observable in a family of children, all endowed with the vivid interest in life natural to the young, unworn mind, that some will remember one novel experience, and some another. But who can say why 1 What is the reason that A forgets the joy or pain he felt as keenly at the moment as B did, when with B an indelible impression is left ? Further, why are mere trifles remembered through a lifetime when things felt to be important escape into the limbo of the forgotten ?

Special aptitudes are often though, of course, not invariably a mere matter of memory. Other things being equal, the dull, plodding boy who tries to remember will never outrival his companion who cannot forget. Even in the matter of spelling what an advantage has the lad who has an accurate memory for the shape of words and "how they look ? ' !

Long-continued grief or anxiety damages the memory ; so do the many preoccupations of civilized existence. The illiterate peasant who lived in the earlier half of the nineteenth

century had a clear and detailed recollection of the narrow experiences of his life. His great-grandson will have a wider scope of knowledge superficially, but he will not recollect so accurately.

Some people are supposed to have "wonder- ful memories " because their attainments are unusual. His little world is astonished when a country squire gives an account of Italian agriculture in the days of Virgil ; yet the same man may know nothing of what is going on in his own village and on his own estate. He is, however, credited with the common workaday information he does not possess in addition to what he does really know, because it is supposed that every one keeps a hold on what relates to his own life and success. A young man, whom his poorer neighbours regarded as " book-learned," was unable to say which of the fields just outside the entrance gate of his father's house belonged to the family and which did not ; still, in spite of this ignorance, he was thought to have a good memory, because the facts which his mind did seize on were sufficiently unfamiliar to seem marvellous to the people around him. G. W.

COBDEN : A REPUTED SAYING (9 th S. xii. 327). At this reference a correspondent gives a reported conversation of Cobden's, in which he is alleged to have stated that if other countries did not adopt Free Trade, then this country would be ruined by Free Trade in half a century.

This imaginary conversation has been copied with delight from your columns by Protectionist newspapers, such as the Pall Mall Gazette, for it serves the double pur- pose of discrediting Cobden's judgment, and invoking that judgment in support of their proposals.

While I do not grudge the Protectionists this addition to their armoury of arguments, I should like to point out that there is absolutely no authorization for the conver- sation attributed to Cobden, and that it is entirely at variance with opinions which he is known to have expressed. For example, speaking in Dundee on 19 January, 1844, he said :

" I say further that it is our policy to receive from other countries, and if foreign countries exclude us it is only a stronger reason why we should throw open our ports more widely to them."

HAROLD Cox.

Cobden Club.

SHAM BURIALS (9 th S. xii. 246). Referring to MR. EDWARD PEACOCK'S inquiry on this subject, perhaps I may be permitted to point