Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/340

 394 NOTES AND QUERIES. i»» s. iv. Nov. n, m Gilbert White of Selborne about the hiberna- tion of swallows. At the end of that article is not the use of we a mistake of a learned writer ? He says :— "The possibilities of more complete and sys- tematic observation, as civilization pens up hitherto unexplored or uninhabited regions, and science develops and improves her methods, may bring us nearer than either Gilbert White or we at the end of the nineteenth century to the answer." The comparison between us on the one hand and Gilbert White or we on the other is cer- tainly awkward. Accusative us seems to be used with a notion of futurity, while nomi- native we is left at the end of the present century to console a naturalist of the preced- ing one. He was. We are. Perhaps us should be our sons. The sentence requires rewriting, though the Times will soon have lived in three centuries ! On pp. 87-8 of the ' Dialogo dell' Imprese Militari et Amorose di Monsignor Paolo Qiouio, Vescouo di Nucera' (in Roma ap- presso Antonio Barre, mdlv.), the author states: " Io perche alcuni scriuono che lo struzzo non coua le sue oua, sedendoui sopra come gli altri uccelli, ma guardandoli con raggi efficacissimi del lume de gli occhi," &c. What writers had attributed to the ostrich this supposed habit of hatching its eggs by means of rays of light from its eyes ? Else- where the gossiping old bishop alludes to the well-known legend about beavers, to which he seems to have paid special attention. Palamedes. The Whorwood Family.— This family, once of considerable importance and an- tiquity, possessed a good deal of property at Headington, near Oxford, and at Holton, some five miles distant from the city. The following curious entry in the register of the latter place may interest your readers :— "Henry Ire ton, Commissary-General toSir Thomas Fairfax, and Bridget, daughter to Oliver Cromwell, Lieutenant-General of the Horse to the said Sir Thomas Fairfax, were married by Mr. Dell, in the Lady Whorwood her house in Holton, 15 June, 1646. -Allan Eales, Rector." At that time Oxford was besieged by Fairfax, and surrendered on 20 June. Bridget Cromwell, who, according to Thomas Carlyle, was " solemnly handed over to new destinies by the Rev. Mr. Dell," was at that time twenty-one years of age (?). Ireton died in 1651, and his widow was afterwards married to Charles Fleetwood, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and died in 1681. What claim to the title of "Lady" the owner of Holton House possessed is not at all clear; probably she was so styled from being owner of the house and manor. For many years the Whorwood family possessed much property there and elsewhere, but owing to improvidence nearly the whole of their estates were disposed or. Dr. Bliss in his ' Reliquiae Hearnianse' has an interesting note upon this subject under date 1856, commenting on Joe Pullen's tree at Heading- ton Hill, and mentions that the Rev. Thomas Henry Whorwood, D.D., in order to get rid of the encumbrances to which he had suc- ceeded, had parted with the estates. Fifty years ago I knew Dr. Whorwood, then a fellow of Magdalen College, a once familiar figure in the High Street at Oxford, whose name was pronounced " Horrud." He left Oxford for thecollege living of Willoughby in Warwickshire, wheie he died some years ago. About 1856 I can remember the hatch- ment being suspended over the door of the house in the High Street where his mother had resided and where she died. John Pickford, M.A. Bell-ringing Custom : " Spurring " Peal. —It is well to chronicle in ' N. <fc Q.' the sur- vival of old customs. At the villages of Beckingham and Saundby, in Nottingham- shire, on the Sunday when the banns of marriage of a couple are published for the first time, it is customary to announce the fact by a peal on the church bells immediately after morning service. This is locally known as the " spurring peal." A similar peal is also rung when the banns have been published for the third time, and the couple are then said to be " spurred up." H. Andrews. Gainsborough. A Persistent Misprint in Browning's Works.—In the first edition of ' Parleyings with Certain People' (1887), p. 171; in the " Uniform Edition " of Browning's ' Works,' vol. xvi. p. 207 ; and, as I have learnt, in the " Popular Edition " in two volumes, which I have not seen, a passage in the ' Parleyings with Gerard de Lairesse' (v.), reads thus :— Fancy composed the strife 'Twixt sense and soul: for sense, my De Lairesse, Cannot content itself with outward things, Mere beauty : soul must needs know whence there springs— How, when and why—what sense but loves, nor lists To know at all. This is both self-contradictory and contrary to fact. To make the passage consistent and true, in the second instance in which " sense " occurs, for " sense " we evidently should read "soul." "Sense" does "content itself with outward things,mere beauty." Because "soul" could not thus content itself, men of old,