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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. vn. MAY 25, 1901.

as MR. RTTTTON has pointed out, the^north- east corner of Hyde Park was, two hundrec and fifty years ago, called Tyburn Meadow that St. George's Burying-Ground was estab lished at the west end of Tyburn Field and that finally Bayard's Watering Place, the modern Bayswater, was declared by an eighteenth - century Act of Parliament to be " parcel of the Manor of Tyburn.' The conclusion irresistibly forces itself, at any rate on my mind, that the nucleus of the manor was situated near the Marble Arch. I cannot accept the argument that the name "Tyburn" was a movable one, which was bestowed on whatever site the gallows occupied. When the "fatal tree' was removed from Smithfield, that name, a much more common one than Tyburn, did not follow it in its wanderings. It seems to me, with deference to many learned and able topographers, that a readiness to adopt the often baseless theories of our predecessors is simply due to a disinclination to hunt out facts for ourselves.

In conclusion, I will only advert to one more point in MR. LOFTIE'S paper, in which I regret to find myself at issue with that gentle- man. MR. LOFTIE says, "Tyburn, at the time of the Domesday Survey, was a manor which extended from Rugmere, now Blooms- bury, westward to the brook of Tyburn." Putting aside the fact that Domesday no- where defines the boundaries of Tyburn manor, I would ask MR. LOFTIE on what evidence he identifies Rugmere with Blooms- bury. Rugmere, to begin with, was in the parish of St. Pancras, while Bloomsbury was in that of St. Giles of the Lepers. I would venture to invite the attention of MR. LOFTIE to a note on 'The Prebendal Manor of Rugmere ' which I contributed to St. Pancras Notes and Queries for 2 March, 1900. From certain data, which chiefly consisted in the survival of the name in comparatively recent times, I made the deduction that the old manor of Rugmere occupied that portion of the parish of St. Pancras which lies between the boundary of the parish of St. Maryle- bone on the west, the Hampstead Road and High Street, Camden Town, on the east, the old highway between Paddington and Isling- ton on the south, and the Chalk Farm boundary of Hampstead parish on the north. As we learn from Domesday that it possessed "nemus ad sepes," it was probably an out- lying portion of the great forest of Middlesex. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

NEPTUNE AND CROSSING THE LINE. I have always understood that the quaint custom at

sea known as the visit of Neptune, and the disagreeable adjunct of "shaving" by the sailors practised (unless a fine be paid as commutation) upon those who have never crossed the line, took place at the equator, arid this is confirmed by the recent account of the visit to the Ophir when passing from the northern into the southern hemisphere. I was therefore surprised to read, in a 'Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America in 1796 and 1797,' by Francis Baily (the " Philo- sopher of Newbury," who in later life greatly distinguished himself in astronomy), pub- lished' in 1856, long after the author's death in 1844, that the ceremony seems formerly to have been carried out on entering the torrid zone. Baily (then in the twenty-second year of his age) started on his voyage on 21 October, 1795, intending to land at New York, but in consequence of a tremendous gale as the ship was approaching the American coast, they were driven out to sea, and, after failing to land on the Bermudas, had at last (the ship being almost a wreck) to make for the West Indies, and succeeded in reaching Antigua on 27 December, where Baily remained until 24 January, 1796, and, after a more prosperous voyage than his first, arrived at Norfolk, on the coast of Virginia, on the 14th of the following month. It was on the way to Antigua that they crossed the tropic of Cancer on Christmas Day, 1795; and "here it was," says Baily (p. 84),

u that Old Neptune, as is usual in such cases, came aboard and demanded a sight of those who had not entered the sanctum sanctorum before. We were I accordingly all drawn up, and he soon signalized those who had never yet crossed the line, and, having exacted his fine, departed. In case of non- compliance we should have been punished agreeably bo the manner prescribed in such cases, and which is called shaving : it is this : the sailors place you on a stick over a large tub of water, and, at a signal given, the stick is knocked from under, and you fall backwards into the tub over your head and ears in water ; when you raise your head it is immediately smeared over with pitch and tar and all the filth they can gather about the ship, and if 5e so much the more satisfied and delighted." [t will be noticed that in the above quotation Baily calls the tropic of Cancer "the line," which I believe in nautical language now always signifies the equator. I should like Tom one locality to the other.
 * hey can introduce any into your mouth, they will
 * o know when the " shaving " was transferred

W. T. LYNN.

THE MAYFLOWER AND THE NATIONAL FLAG. It having been stated that the Mayflower "s represented in the fresco in the Lords' jorridor at St. Stephen's as flying the present union flag, I have climbed up to see; and