Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/40

 24 [&» S. IV. July 8, '99. NOTES AND QUERIES. Seller's career to me in my youth when he (Mr. Offor) was himself of a very advanced age. It will be observed that this frontispiece title does not supply a date, and this omission, Lowndes and Seller's biographer in the 'D.N.B.'inform us, was invariable with this author. On the fly-leaf of the cover, how- ever, the MS. note to which I have previously referred originally ran :— " A Booke of the Punishments of the Common Laws of England. By Seller, London. No date. Extremely Rare. 11 Plates unknown to Collectors and considered to be unique." Subsequently, however, this MS. entry has been corrected, apparently by the same scribe, the words " No date " being struck through by the pen that has added the numerals and words " 1078, see first plate." This amended note inspired my commentary, and I accord- ingly wrote on a loose slip of paper :— "I agree that this book ia extremely rare, but venture to question the date attributed to it. The date on the whipping-post may have been the date when the construction of which it forms a part was erected,* or perhaps even when the plato was pre- pared, but the publication must have been at least seven years later. To say nothing of the costumes— to the evidence of which, however, I attach great importance—the initials on the Yeoman of the Ouard'sf back in the last platej are I.R. If this book had been published so early as 1678 they must have been C.R. It is obvious, then, that the work, whenever prepared, was published sub- sequently to 1685, the year of the accession of James II." To this note I appended my own initials and the date when written, " 2 March, 1885." Gnomon. Temple. (To be continued.) Beater and Python.—In Brand's ' Obser- vations on Popular Antiquities,' cd. 1842, vol. iii. j). 89, a passage is quoted from Eugenius Philalethes, which says that when the beaver is in danger of being taken he bites off his stones, for which he is hunted ; but " when he is hunted, having formerly bitten off his stones, he standcth upright and showcth the hunters that he hath none for them, and therefore his death cannot profit them, by moans whereof they arc averted and seek for another." An analogous story, current in China, reads thus :— " Jen-Shic (or Python) is only fond of flowering herbs and women. In the mountains [of Southern tl should, perhaps, have written "Yeoman Gaoler" or "Yeoman Porter," the scene being Tower Hill. + See the text descriptive of plate xi. China] there grows a vine called Jcu-Shie-Tano (Python-Vine), which the hunter, clad in a red ana flowerful garment, handles when he goes to find the snake. When it looks on the vine, its gaze and body are fixed and never move. Then the hunter puts on its head the female's garment, and ties the animal with the vine. Its gall is distributed throughout the body, and can only be gathered by beating; so, if a man beats one part of its body for a while, and then opens the part with a sharp knife, the gall will fall down in a mass. If the python do not die after the loss of its gall, it is usually released. When it happens afterwards that the snake meets another hunting party it soon extends its old wound to show the absence of its treasure [the gall in question is said to be efficacious in saving the life of a man under tortures]."—Sie Chung-Che, ' Wu-Tsah-Tsu,' written c. 1610, Japanese ed. 1661, book ix. fol. 47 b. KUMAGUSCJ MlNAKATA. 'Down among TnE Dead Men.'—In the exhibition of the Royal Academy there is a picture, No. 11, representing a number of Cavaliers on their feet, and two lying on the ground, apparently intoxicated. The title of the picture is ' Down among the Dead Men.' Now the artist ought to have known that in the poetical phrase of the seventeenth cen- tury the " dead men " at a banquet meant the empty bottles on the floor. This renders it quite unnecessary to smirch the memories of Cavaliers by representing them as helpless sots. It. Denny Urlin. Jewish Antiquities at Lincoln.—The following is a cutting from the Grantham Journal for 10 June :— "On Monday, a visit was paid by tho Jewish Historical Society of England to Lincoln, which is recognized as the most interesting city in all Eng- land to students of early Jewish history in this country. The old Jew's House at the bottom of Steep Hill and the house of Aaron the Jew at the corner of Christ's Hospital Terrace, both came in for close attention and detailed examination. As Aaron died in 1186, the house cannot be less than 750 years old, and it is absolutely the oldest private dwelling-house of stone in England, and probably in all Europe. Aaron of Lincoln was a very distin- guished man in his time, being, indeed, one of the Rothschilds of the period, and when ho died Henry II. seized his treasure and debts. The treasure was lost on the way to Normandy, but for many years after Aaron's death his debts were col- lected by a special branch of the Exchequer, two treasurers ami two clerks being kept fully employed in keeping tho accounts. His monetary transactions were thus obviously on an almost national scale." Celer et Audax. 'The Giants of Patagonia.'—This little book professes to be by dipt. Benjamin Franklin Bourne, and I believe was published in the United States first in 1853. The same year it was republished in London by Ingram, Cooke or Co. and by Henry Vizetelly, without
 * See the text descriptive of plate i.