Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/123

 9* s. v. FEB. 10, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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(' Essay on Taste '), i-xxxi ; * Tour through London/ 1-209 ; and index, 1-5 (not paged) The title-page bears the autograph " J. Brittori, and several of the fly-leaves contain penci notes, now nearly obliterated. Is this a copy of the volume edited by William Nicholson 1 If so, it would seem that the editor was not even cognizant of the author' Christian name. What are the reasons for attributing it to the repentant Ralph (" ev'n Ralph repents ") of the 'Dunciad"?

JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

" NORMAN GiZER"(9 fch S. iii. 486; iv. 112, 545). Your list of synonyms for the missel- thrush interested me very rnuch. I have recently come across I am sorry I forget where another, mime- thrush, which so far I have not hunted down. The ' Century Dic- tionary,' &c., do not give the word.

May I ask you if you are interested in birds' notes'? If you are, will you tell me whether the pink, pink, metallic note (mostly double), resembling the chaffinch's, belongs to the blue tit, or as many maintain I think erroneously to the great tit 1 ?

J. A. CRAWLEY.

P.S. A Scotch lady tells me that a heron is called the craggy heron in Aberdeenshire. This, too, I have so far failed to find.

Will MR. G. Y. BALDOCK be so very kind as to tell us the exact title of Commander Willcox's little book on birds, and also and especially the name of the publisher ?

J. B. WILSON.

Knightwick Rectory.

The mavis and the merle are said to be names of the common thrush ; but Sir Walter Scott distinguishes between the two :

Merry it is in the good green wood When the mavis and merle are singing.

' Lady of the Lake,' canto iv.

In a note to these lines it is said that the mavis is the thrush, and the merle is the blackbird. E. YARDLEY.

DE BENSTEDE OR BENSTED FAMILY (9 th S.v. 29). There can be little doubt all the families of this name (though variously spelt) are descended from one origin ; but it would be well-nigh impossible to find the missing links. There is only one Benstede pedigree, that which is to be found in Clutterbuck's 1 Hertfordshire,' vol. ii. p. 280 (see Coleman's London, 1866). Burke's 'Armory ' names seven or eight families (no county given) entitled to arras ; Benstead, Bensteed, Bettshed, Berist,
 * General Introduction to Printed Pedigrees,'

Bense, &c. ; yet there does not appear to have been one belonging to the ra,nks of the landed gentry since Margaret, daughter and heiress of William Benstede, Esq., married Sir John Brocket, of Hatfield, in 1558. Long years previously the family appears to have dropped the prefix de, and in many cases the final e. The name is one of those seldom met with inevery-day life. I know a Sergeant Bensted, hailing from Ely, who served the Queen for twenty -five years, and has a soldier son now in South Africa.

HERBERT B. CLAYTON. 39, Renfrew Road, Kennington Lane, S.E.

The reference MR. CROUCH asks for is to Temple Bar, No. 365, for April, 1891.

R. B.

Upton.

EMERY FAMILY (9 th S. v. 27). Gleanings from the parish registers of Arlesey, given in the three volumes of Bedfordshire Notes and Queries, 1886-89, will furnish particulars of this family from 1544 to 1594.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

SHEPHERDESS WALK (9 th S. iv. 306, 424 ; v. 11). In the list of tea gardens given in * The Picture of London for 1803' is "Shepherd and Shepherdess Tea Gardens, &c., City Road, leading to Islington Much fre- quented in the summer time by tea parties, &c." Would these tea gardens be connected with the " very old beerhouse " mentioned by MR. J. W. M. GIBBS, or was it too far afield ? I shall welcome particulars of these, and any other old tea gardens in the north or east of London. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

MISQUOTATION (9 th S. v. 45). The four lines I quoted were copied verbatim from "The Poems of Oliver Goldsmith, embellished with engravings, from the designs of Richard Westall, R.A. Printed for John Sharp, Piccadilly. 1822." My attention has been drawn to the fact that in other editions in the last line

That one small head should carry all he knew, jould is the word used, and not "should." The various editions in the library here all lave " could." There is a popular Irish song which says that

At five in the morning, by most of the clocks, We rode from Kilruddery, to try for a fox. As the huntsmen took their time from ' most of the clocks," I shall in future follow he word used in most of the editions. But here is, perhaps, a better reason for using