Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/261

 9S. VII. MARCH 30, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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she was employed carrying cargo and pas- sengers between Cork, St. Petersburg, London, and Liverpool until 1847, when, according to Lloyds List of 21 January of that year, she was stranded near Youghal and went to pieces. Being owned in Ireland, and trading exclusively from it, she was certainly entitled to be considered an Irish vessel.

MR. MARSHALL doubts whether Lieut. Richard Roberts, R.N., the commander of the Sirius, was an Irishman. If he will turn to * N. & Q.,' 2 nd S. iv. 398, he will find my copy of an inscription from the monument erected by his widow in the churchyard of Passage West in the county of Cork, which commences :

"This stone commemorates, in the churchyard of his native parish, the merits and the premature death of the first officer under whose command a steam vessel ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean," &c.

Thus, I think, I have proved that the Sirius belonged to Ireland, that she was a passenger steamer, and commanded by an Irishman, whose son and family, to my personal know- ledge, are at this date residents there.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

LEGHORN (9 th S. vii. 47, 110). See Walter Savage Landor's ' Works,' 1876, viii. 425. In a paper on ' Francesco Petrarcha,' after pro- testing that he himself would be almost as ready to abbreviate Francesco into Frank as Petrarcha into Petrarch, Landor goes on to say :

"We English take strange liberties with Italian names. Perhaps the human voice can articulate no sweeter series of sounds than the syllables which constitute Livorno. Certainly the same remark is inapplicable to Leghorn. However, we are not liable to censure for this depravation ; it originated with the Genoese, the ancient masters of the town, whose language is extremely barbarous not unlike the Provensal of the Troubadours. With them the letter g, pronounced hard, as it always was among the Greeks and Romans, is common for v; thus lagoro for lavoro."

Landor's essay on Petrarcha was first pub- lished in the Foreign Quarterly Review, July, 1843. STEPHEN WHEELER.

NATIONAL NICKNAMES (9 th S. iv. 28, 90, 12, 238, 296, 401; vii. 135). Perhaps the following colloquial names for the various States, &c., may be of interest. They are collected from * Political Americanisms,' by C. L. Norton, 1890 : Badger State, Wisconsin ; Bay State, Massachusetts ; Bear State, Ar- kansas ; Blue Hen State, Delaware ; Blue Noses, Canadians, especially Nova Scotians ; Buckeye State, Ohio ; Centennial State, Colorado ; Corn Cracker State, Kentucky ;

Cracker State, Georgia; Creole State or Pelican State, Louisiana ; Empire State, New York ; Hawkeye State, Iowa ; Hoosier State, Indiana ; Jayhawkers, inhabitants of Kansas: Keystone State, Pennsylvania ; Land of Steaay Habits or Nutmeg State, Connecti- cut ; Little Rhody, Rhode Island ; Lumber State, Pine Tree State, Maine ; Mother of Presidents, Virginia ; Porkopolis, Cincin- nati ; Sage Brush State, Nevada.

W. B. H.

BLACKHEADS (9 th S. vii. 169).! am surprised that this word is not already in the * H.E.D.,' as it is by no means of recent coinage. Black- heads (more commonly, perhaps, called come- dores) are due to the overcharging with fatty matter of the sebaceous glands of the skin. The technical term for this disorder is acne punctata. The blackness is due to dirt which is absorbed by the fatty secretion of the gland. C. C. B.

Nine- tenths of the people who are troubled with blackheads would not know them under the term acne. Blackhead is the general name for the dots which appear in the pores of many skins, about the nose generally. The old woman's remedy is simple : soak with hot water and squeeze them out. There is another belief that the blackheads of the spots are the heads of live grubs.

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

The term " blackheads " is much older than 1898. Dr. Erasmus Wilson, F.R.S., in his 'Management of the Skin,' London, 1847, while using the term, also describes them to be " punctuated or spotted acne." Halliwell, in his * Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words,' ninth edition, 1878, speaks of them as "boils." EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

This term has been familiar to me from childhood in East Cornwall in the sense editorially explained, and I believe it is to be found in print in various advertisements of " blood purifiers." DUNHEVED.

BERNERS FAMILY (9 th S. yi. 231, 278, 453 ; v ii 70). We have no definite origin for the Barrow family of Essex, but Dame Alice of Barrow also came from Essex, if we are to accept her progenitor Deorman as the ex- truded owner of the unidentified Geddesdune in Essex ; for London, then as now, was largely peopled from the provinces. Nor indeed need she be the last of her Barrow clan. Such pedigrees are necessarily im- perfect, and younger sons of a previous