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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. APBIL i, m

peasant sat at home so persistently that his wife found him in her way, and called out to him sarcastically one day that he was no better than an old hen sitting on her eggs. A neighbouring gossip (rather deaf) caught the last words imperfectly, and spread a report that the lieabed had laid an egg and was sittingonit. The next-door gossipsaid two eggs, another made them four, and before the day was out, rumour, like a rolling snowball, increasing as it went, had proclaimed that the couple had already five hundred eggs of the man's laying for sale. A curious old Kussian woodcut, reproduced in iiovinsky's 'Atlas of Folk - Pictures,' represents the peasant people streaming in from all points of the compass to cheapen the man - hen's eggs. But to return to the would-be breeder of the fiery serpent, perhaps it was not a chicken that he hatched, but an ugly duckling from the egg of a canard. H. E. M.

St. Petersburg.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EASTER (continued from 9 th S. i. 284).

Martin Day, D. D., of St. Faith's, London. Doomes- Day, a Treatise of the Resurrection of the Body, in 29 Sermons on 1 Cor. xv. 4to., 1636.

Robert Jones. The Resurrection Rescued from the Soldiers Calumnies, in Two Sermons preached at St. Marie's in Oxon. 18mo., 1659.

Stengel. Ova Paschalia, 1672, see ' N. & Q.,' 4 th S. v. 120.

Thomas Beconsall, B.D., Fellow of B.N.C., Oxon. Easter Sermon, on the Resurrection of the same body, from St. John v. 28, 29. 4to., Oxon, 1697.

William Jackling. The Paschal Solemnity Recti- fied : or, the Perpetual Table for finding Easter in the Book of Common Prayer corrected. 8vo., 1728.

A. Bucher. Observationes in Anonymi Later-

culum Paschalem. 4to., Amst., 1733.

The Office of the Holy Week, according to the

Roman Missal and Breviary from Palm Sunday

to Tuesday in Easter- week. Plates, 8vo., Coghlaii, 1788.

A Psalm of Thanksgiving to be sung by the Children of Christ's Hospital, on Monday and Tuesday in Easter Week, according to the ancient custom, for the Founders. Broadsheet, Rivington, 1827. (Composed by Mr. Young, 1748.)

C. M. Baggs, D.I). Ceremonies of Holy Week described, with Account of the Armenian Mass at Rome, and Holy Week at Jerusalem. 8vo., Rome, 1839.

C. M. Baggs, D.D. Pontifical Mass sung at St. Peter's on Easter Day, described and illustrated. 8vo., Rome, 1840.

A. H. Ch. von Leeuwen. Specimen Historicp- Theplogicum de Sacris Paschalibus in Ecclesia Christiana, sreculo i. et ii. 8vo. , Tielse, 1860.

Easter Eggs. Article in the Strand Magazine, April, 1897.

W. C. B.

SIR HENRY WOTTON AND KEPLER. The writer of the article on ' Sir Henry Wotton and the Bacon-Shakspearo Controversy ' (ante,

p. 181), in speaking of Kepler as the " dis- coverer of the principle of photography," appears to have forgotten the description of the camera obscura by Delia Porta in his 'Magia Naturalis,' published at Naples in 1569. The date of Wotton's letter to Bacon is not given in the 'Reliquiae,' but it is in answer to one from Bacon dated 20 Oct., 1620, and was evidently written shortly after- wards. It will be noticed that Kepler does not claim therein any originality, but merely remarks that he had made the drawings which he showed Wotton " non tanquam Pictor, sed tanquam Mathematicus," i. e., not as works of art, but as illustrations of a principle. W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

"WHAT DO THEY CALL YOU?" (See ante, p. 146.) In West Cornwall the ordinary way of questioning is (or was), "What are you called 1 ?" not "What is your name?" I re- member a minister who had resided in that part of the country mentioning to me that when he put the question to a boy in another locality, out of Cornwall, the boy seemed to resent it. He said, " I 'm not called any- thing." He thought the drift of the inquiry was to ascertain what nickname he had.

C. LAWRENCE FORD.

Bath.

"PETIT BLEU " = CLOSED TELEGRAPH CARD. According to the Daily Neivs, which is usually well informed on French matters, " the popular name ' petit bleu,' used to denote the closed telegraph card which figures so pro- minently in the Dreyfus case, has been adopted officially, and is now generally employed in judicial reports submitted to French magistrates. It would appear that Guy de Maupassant was the first to make use of the expression for this purpose. ' Ne t'occupe de rien,' says Mme. de Marelle in ' Bel Ami.' ' Je t'enverraiun petit bleu demain matin.'" Petit bleu is also the slang name for claret of poor quality. JOHN HEBB.

2, Canonbury 'Mansions, N.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ON 'AURORA LEIGH.' " De mortuis nil nisi bonum " is all very well, but when the dead still live in their works, they are as amenable to reprehension as if they were still in the body. I could scarcely believe my eyes when in the 'Study Windows' of the late Mr. Lowell (Tauchnitz's edition, p. 158) I came upon the following criticism of ' Aurora Leigh.' The book in hand was Mr. Swinburne's 'Chastelard,' of which Mr. Lowell says :

"With here and there a pure strain of sentiment, a genuine touch of nature, the effect of the whole is unpleasant with the faults of the worst school of modern poetry the physically intense school, as