Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/511

 iv. DEC. so, 535 NOTES AND QUERIES. present are also stated. The operative part of the Order is as follows : " Now, therefore, Her Majesty is pleased, by and with the advice of Her Privy Council, to Order," or " Declare." An Order of Council is made, under some statutory power, by three or more Lords of the Council. It is headed: "At the Council Chamber [Whitehall], the day of . By the Lords of Her Majesty s Most Honourable Privy Council. Present [then follow the names of the lords]," and the operative part is, " Now, therefore, their Lordships are pleased to Order," or " Declare." Both sorts of orders are authen- ticated by the signature of the clerk of the Council. There are also orders made by Statutory Committees of the Privy Council. These are authenticated by the signature of the secretary of the department. R—N. " KHAKI."—This word, used as adiective and noun, is spelt variously khaki, khakee, and kharki. The first is the official and the best spelling, as the word is from khak, Hindostani, and ultimately Persian, for "earth,'1 khaki meaning earth- or dust- coloured. Mr. Kipling's spelling in the ' Absent - minded Beggar' is presumably adopted to realize the sound of the a. Khaki is an Anglo-Indian material, chiefly cotton, and its military use is about fifty years old. A memorandum for infantry in the Soudan (Churchill, 'The River War,1 vol. ii. p. 481) mentions that a ready means of clearing water is by draining it through khaki. Nearly all the helmets in use in the Soudan were also made of this material. For khaki as adjective, see 7th S. vii. 369. Its use in war is a copy of the natural safeguard known to science as " protective mimicry." An American correspondent with Lord Methuen's force—Daily Mail (11 December) —bears striking testimony to this value of khaki:— " At distances where red or blue or black would be striking khaki is not seen at all. It blends our men with the landscape BO completely that in bright daylight at short distances from the enemy our forces almost gain the advantage of an army manoeuvring at night." He adds:— " As I write the men are dissolving mud in their pails and dipping brushes in it to paint their white straps mud-colour. Every pouch and strap and cloth-covered water-bottle that would show white or dark is undergoing this treatment." HlPPOCLIDES. ' RUSSIAN FOLK-PICTUHES.'—It may interest readers of ' N. <fe Q.' to know that a subscrip- tion is open, up to 1 January, 1900, O.S., at the office of the journal Iskusstvo i Khvdojest- vennaya Promyshlennost, 83, Moika, St. Peters- burg, to the late senator D. A. Rovinsky's posthumous work under the above title in Russ. It is to be edited by' N. P. Sobko, in 2 vols. 4to., with 400 facsimiles (plain) in the text, including a few coloured on separate leaves. The publisher is R. Qolike, who prints the tihute (Jester) comic weekly, and the sub- scription price is five roubles (carriage extra). 1 have no notion when the volumes will be ready, as all I know of the matter is contained in the Shute's advertisement, but expectancy is on tiptoe. H. E. M. St. Petersburg. " MINIK."—This name is applied by match- makers to their smaller-sized wooden splints, and the word seems worthy of being recorded in ' N. & Q.' Minikin, of which evidently it is an abbreviation, is stated in several of the larger dictionaries to have the same meaning; but I doubt whether the longer word is gener- ally used in this country. Minik, on the other hand, is the common word, and appears to deserve a place to itself in the dictionaries. EDWY Q. CLAYTON. Richmond, Surrey. BROWNING'S 'MEETING AT NIGHT' AND 'PARTING AT MORNING.'—Dr. Berdoe in his 'Browning Cyclopaedia' sadly misinterprets the second of these exquisite little poems. He says:— "In the sequel (' Parting at Morning') the rising sun calls men to work: the man of the poem to work of a lucrative character; and excites in the woman (if we interpret the slightly obscure line correctly) a desire for more society than the seaside home affords."—P. 270. Dr. Berdoe finds the "lucrative character" of the man's work in the expression " a path of gold." The " path of gold " was not a path to gold. It was the track traced by the early sunbeam, along which this humble toiler of the sea pursued his eastward and seaward way. Still worse is the misinterpretation of "the need of a world of men to me " as " a desire for more society than the seaside home affords " ! In that saddest of poems, 'James Lee's Wife,' we read :— I took you—how could I otherwise ? For a world to me and more. And again :— Well, and if none of these good things came, What did the failure prove ? The man wan my whole world, all the same. If further comment on the meaning of " the need," i.e., the want " of a world of men to me," is needed, we have it in Mrs. Browning's 'Woman's Shortcomings':—