Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/142

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. FEB. is, m

certain that the "95 houses" included the original "mansio," not retained as a royal residence ; for in 1503 the king's daughter, Margaret of Scotland, "put up" at the house of this Mr. Hall. This family. I understand, farmed the salt dues for that district, and they owned a considerable residence, "The Grange" an external parish described as the Manor of Earlsfields ; it was, and is, an estate comprising several acres of land. This land was sold in 1588 under pressure, when its then owner was confined in the Marshalsea Prison for one of his many misdemeanours.

A. H.

THE IMPERFECT SUBJUNCTIVE IN ENGLISH (9 th S. ii. 408). To the example given, " He should take care that she affirmed," i.e., "that she should affirm," many others might be added from Browning's poetry ; e.g., in 'Prospice': I would hate that death bandaged my eyes and

/orbore, bade me creep past.

Maetzner in his ' English Grammar,' vol. i. p. 325, Grece's translation, says :

" The forms of the conjunctive, except in the present of verbs, have become almost totally un- recognizable, or those of the indicative have taken their place, so that even the existence of a conjunc- tive is denied."

In the verb paradigm, however, on p. 328, "bound" is given as the preterite conjunc- tive. A familiar instance is the journalistic notice : " It is time that this correspondence closed" C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

Bath.

BLOTTING PAPER (1 st S. viii. 104, 185 ; 2 nd S. xii. 454 ; 3 rd S. iv. 497). The ' H.E.D.' gives references to Herman's ' Vulgaria' (1519) and Brinsley's ' Ludus Literarius' (1612). As early allusions to blotting paper are uncom- mon, I would add an instance in Otes on Jude ; date of utterance, about 1602 ; of pub- lication in print, 1633 : " Our shields and swords are of blotting paper, not of steele." RICHARD H. THORNTON.

Portland, Oregon.

PiLLATERY (9 th S. ii. 427). Pellitory-of-the- wall (Parietaria officinalis) must not be con- founded with pellitory - of - Spain (Anacyclus pyrethrum}. Both had formerly a good repute in medicine, and the latter still has a place in our pharmacopoeia. It is a powerful stimulant to the salivary glands, and is sometimes used in cases of paralysis of the tongue, and ! more frequently as a mouthwash and cure for toothache. Folkard ('Plant-Lore') very unjustly classes it with plants used only for charms and spells.

Pellitory-of-the-wall, too, though no longer official, is really an excellent diuretic, owing EIATCLIFFE'S informant, it is not (like the Dackwoods doctor) "a stunner on fits." Even Lyte and Gerard do not recommend it for these, though they give a ^goodly list of ail- ments against which it is useful. It had iormerly many names, most of which explain themselves, as perdicalis, perniciades, vitreola, nitrago, herba muralis, &c. C. C. B.
 * o the nitre it contains ; but, in spite of MR.

MR. RATCLIFFE has evidently nearly got the old style of spelling pellitory. William Turner in his 'Herbal,' 1561, bk. ii.fol. 13, gives parietori or pillitore of the wall, also pellitore ind parietariam. Gerard supplies the fol- lowing additional names : " Vrceolarus and ritraria, because it was used to secure glasses, pipkins, and such like. Perdicium of par- tridges, which sometimes feed thereon."

JOHN RADCLIFFE.

MINUTES AND SECONDS (9 th S. ii. 509 ; iii. 16, 71). The use of seconds is much older than seems to be supposed by PROF. SKEAT. At least twenty-five centuries B.C. the Baby- lonians used a sexagesimal system of nota- tion, consisting of sari and sossi, of which we have vestiges when we reckon sixty minutes to the hour and sixty seconds to the minute, or 3,600 seconds that is, a saros of sossi to the hour. That we count twelve pence to the shilling and twenty shillings to the pound, twelve inches to the foot, twenty-four hours to the day, three hundred and sixty degrees of longitude round the equator, ninety degrees of latitude from the equator to the poles, and sixty miles to a degree, may also be traced to the same duodecimal Babylonian system of numeration, which originally reckoned sixty shekels to the mina and sixty minas to the talent. All these numbers are factors or multiples of the saros or sixty. Our measures of time, money, of linear and angular space, are all derived from the Greeks, who obtained them from the Babylonians, probably through, the Phoenicians. ISAAC TAYLOR.

WlTHYCOMBE CHURCH STRUCK BY LlGHT-

NING (9 th S. iii. 26). Richard Baxter's " Withi- comb in Devonshire" is Widecombe-in-the- Moor (pronounced Widdicombe), not Withy- combe Raleigh. If MR. LYNN will turn up the place in any Devonshire guide-book he will find a notice of the catastrophe, a terrible one. In ' An Exploration of Dartmoor,' by J. LI. Warden Page (London, 1889), full particu- lars are given from contemporary authorities. Baxterseems to have had before him the narra- tive reproduced by Prince in his 'Worthies of