Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/246

 318 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9» s. iv. oor. u, m mention that in neither features nor disposi- tion did Louis resemble the other members of his family, and also that Napoleon died of a disease similar in character to that which carried Charles Bonaparte to his grave. Henry Gerald Hope. Clapham, S.W. "Swabbers" (9th S. iv. 249). — Halliwell does not describe " swabbers " as " the ace and court cards at whist," but "certain cards at whist by which the holder was entitled to a part of the stakes." The Rev. T. L. O. Davies, in his 'Supplementary English Glossary,' says : " A particular form of whist seems to have been whisk and swabbers." " As whiakand swabbers was the game then in the chief vogue, they were oblig"d to look for a fourth iierson, in order to make up their parties."— ridding, ' Jonathan Wild.' " The society of half a dozen of clowns to play at whiik anil mvabbern would give her more pleasure than if Ariosto himself were to awake from the dead."—Seott, ' Rob Roy.' Everard Home Coleman. 71, Brecknock Road. " Swabbers " relate to an old variation of the game of whist called " whisk (or whist) and swabbers (or swobbers)," or " whisk with swabbers," ifcc. The " swabbers " were cards entitled to extra stakes, and were the knave of clubs, the ace and two of trumps, and the ace of hearts. The name evidently is an extension of the idea embraced in the word whisk, the original title of our national card game. The tricks swept up, or whisked, the cards from the table. The knave of clubs, <fec, swept up, or swobbed, the stakes from the table. This should effectually demonstrate that the title of the normal game was not originally derived from " silence," as some lexicographers hold. J. S. M. T. "A reel in a bottle" (9th S. iv. 129, 232). —Unless I have been grossly deceived (which I think very unlikely) by a friend who Eossesses a model of a full-rigged ship in a ottle, Miss Pollard is mistaken in supposing that the bottle is blown over the article it encloses. My friend assured me that the hull of the ship was first introduced through the neck, and then rigged inside the bottle by means of long needles, which the operator (an old Welsh sailor) used as expertly as if they had been his fingers. The model is beautifully made, and is, I am told, complete and perfect in every particular. C. C. B. Those of your readers who are interested in such puzzles will find a very pretty ship in a bottle in the United Service Museum, Whitehall. This has a card attached to it which says that it was made by a French prisoner. If I remember rightly, there are other objects also in bottles near this; but this one is the most striking. It is standing on a waggon, or carriage, with wheels, ana this is on a hexagonal stand. The ship is in full sail, and the whole work is of a pale yellow colour, as if cut out of light wood. That the bottle should have been blown over the ship I think, in this case, impossible. E. A. C. I have a specimen of this curiosity. The bottle is of white glass, six inches in height, and two inches in diameter. The stopper is of wood, and is held in its place by an iron nail one and a half inches long. Is it, may I ask,a Scottish invention? Is there any signi- ficancein the colours—yellow,green,and white —of the three narrow silk bands bound round in a zigzag manner the sixteen arms of the reel? The bottle, with other property, came to me from Dublin, and at one time be- longed to the wife (ne'e Delamere) of Thomas Hope, of Clontarf, a Scotsman, and a grand- son of the first Earl of Hopetoun, who died in February, 1742. I may add that the nail through the shank of the stopper is rusty, but the colours of the silk bands are quite unfaded. I fail to remember having seen a similar piece of workmanship. Heney Gerald Hope. Clapham, S.W. Early History of the Bicycle (9th S. iv. 167, 272).—J. C. F. will easily understand that —to say nothing of the state of the roads of England at the end of the seventeenth century and long after that epoch, and the inability of the craftsmen of those days to produce a machine of anything like the finish, delicacy, and strength of the bicycles now in vogue—experimental machines in- tended to serve the same purpose, such as the velocipedes and hobby-horses of about fifty years ago, were very far indeed from being efficient, so much so that, one after another, each example fell into disuse. When I was a boy I possessed two such con- trivances, one of which was worked by the rider's feet upon treadles; the other was actuated with a lever placed between his knees, and through a central bar the lever passed to a crank on the axle. As all theso contrivances were failures, it seems out of the question that more than a century and a half previous machines analogous to the modern bicycles were constructed. More than once (see 'N. & Q.,' 8th S. x. 318) I have suggested that in the stained glass at Stoke