Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/341

 9 th S. II. OCT. 22, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

333

Admiral Boscawen, in which reference is made to the taking of Port Mahon, " for which," says the letter, " one gentleman was made a lord." In what I presume to be Horace Walpole's own note on this passage, published in the series of 'Letters' to Sir Horace Mann edited by Lord Dover (London, 1833), it is stated that this "gentleman" was Byng, Lord Torrington. This statement is not questioned by Lord Dover, and is inserted by Cunningham in the text without comment or any indication of its source. On this occa- sion it seems that Walpole's usually accurate memory was at fault. The capture of Port Mahon was effected in 1708 by James Stan- hope, then Commander - in - Chief of the English forces in Spain. This exploit was subsequently commemorated when Stanhope was created a peer by the titles of Baron Stanhope of Elvaston and Viscount Stanhope of Mahon, in the island of Minorca. The circumstance is recorded by his descendant the historian as follows :

" Mahon was not forgotten when ten years after its conquest Stanhope was promoted to an earldom, and we may reckon it as among the curious vicis- situdes of human affairs that the name, first given by a Carthaginian chief, Mago, the brother of Hannibal, should now be borne by the eldest son of an English peer."

In a letter to Lady Ossory, dated 4 Sept., 1792 (vol. ix. pp. 387-8), Horace Walpole mentions the visit to Strawberry Hill of the Countess of Sutherland and her " eldest boy." The name of this "eldest boy" (afterwards Duke of Sutherland) is given both by Vernon Smith (the original editor of the letters to Lady Ossory) and by Cunningham as " Lord Strathearn." This is a misreading, the earl- dom of Strathearn having been annexed to the Scotch crown in 1455 (see ' Complete Peerage,' by G. E. C.). For Strathearn we should read Strathnaver, which was the title borne by the eldest son of the Earl of Suther- land, the mother of the boy in question being Countess of Sutherland in her own right. The fact that the future Duke of Sutherland was at this time known as Lord Strathnaver is not noticed by G. E. C.

HELEN TOYNBEE.

Dorney Wood, Burnham, Bucks.

CEDAR TREES (9 th S. ii. 187, 214, 290). The Report of the Conifer Conference held by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1892 contains the most authentic account of the intro- duction of conifers into cultivation. It is there stated, p. 14, that the cedar of Lebanon was introduced in 1664, but no verification of the statement is made. The "cedar" men- tioned by Evelyn is, botanically, no cedar at

all, but a juniper, as is obvious by the men- tion of " berries." It is the tree now known as Juniperus virginiana, the wood of which is so largely used in the manufacture of " cedar pencils." Only one of the old cedars now remains if, indeed, it still survives in the Chelsea Botanic Garden. A year or two ago it was in a very decrepit condition.

MAXWELL T. MASTERS.

In connexion with the discussion as to when cedar trees were first grown in Eng- land and who introduced them, I should be glad to learn when they first made their appearance in Scotland. I am inclined to think it must have been considerably before 1683, about which date they were first intro- duced into England, as there is a cedar growing here which is supposed to be more than three hundred years old. It measures 12ft. 8 in. at 3ft. from the ground, whilst a cedar at Sion House, planted, I understand, towards the end of the seventeenth century, is only 8ft. in diameter at 3ft. above the ground. I may add that at Hopetoun there are some cedars which are even larger than the one here, and most probably, therefore, they are older. J. W. SHAND-HARVEY. Castle Semple, N.B.

FRENCH VILLAGE NAMES (9 th S. ii. 208, 296). The termination -ac, found in hundreds of French village names, is familiar to us from the names of certain vintages in the Charente, the Gironde, and Burgundy, such as Cognac, Pauillac, or Barsac. It has been the subject of as much fruitless speculation as the syllable -inff in English names, as to which past volumes of ' N. & Q.' supply awful warnings.

Perhaps the speculations of the late James Fergusson are the most instructive. He imagined -ac to be an ethnological test, and in his ' Rude Stone Monuments ' constructed an elaborate map to show how the migrations of the dolmen builders were therewith con- nected. More wasted ingenuity was never seen, the dolmens being prehistoric, older by centuries than the names, which are mostly post-Roman. The names are merely dialectic, while the dolmens are geologic, depending on the existence of suitable and easily detach- able slabs of rock.

The guess of your correspondent MR. ARM- STRONG (ante, p. 297) is nearly as absurd. D'Arbois de Jubainville, in an elaborate and exhaustive series of papers published in the Revue Celtique, has now set the much debated question finally at rest. He proves historic- ally that the termination -ac is simply the Celtic possessive suffix -acos, corresponding to the Latin suffix -i-anus, with which -it is f re-