Various

“ Charms.—I beg to represent to the correspondents of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," especially to the clergy and medical men resident in the country, that notices of the superstitious practices still prevalent, or recently prevalent, in different parts of the kingdom, for the cure of diseases, are highly instructive and even valuable, on many accounts. Independently of their archæological {430} interest as illustrations of the mode of thinking and acting of past times, they become really valuable to the philosophical physician, as throwing light on the natural history of diseases. ”

“ As a few inaccuracies such as this may occur in any work of large scope proceeding from the most learned of men, and be accidentally detected by an ignoramus, so a more extensive impeachment of Mr. Hallam's accuracy would make a very trifling deduction from his great claims to respect and well-established fame. I believe I rightly understand the spirit in which you desire your periodical to be the medium for emending valuable works, when I thus guard myself against the appearance of disrespect to a great ornament of literature. ”

“ Such is the romance of the black doll; the reality, we believe, will be found in the fact, that cast-off clothes having been formerly purchased by dealers in large quantities, for the purpose of being resold to merchants, to be exchanged by them in traffic with the uncivilised tribes, who, it is known, will barter any thing for articles of finery,—a black doll, gaily dressed out, was adopted as the sign of such dealers in old apparel. ”

“ Esquemeling, in his History of the Buccaneers, of whom he was one, says that in 1671 many of the Indians at Cape Gracias spoke English and French from their intercourse with the pirates. He gives a curious and not very intelligible account of Cape Gracias, as an island of about thirty leagues round (formed, I suppose, by rivers and the sea) , containing about 1600 or 1700 persons, who have no king; (this is quite at variance with all other accounts of the Mosquito Indians of Cape Gracias) ; and having, he proceeds to say, no correspondence with the neighbouring islands. ”

“ The great fluctuations in the marriages of England are the results of peace after war, abundance after dearth, high wages after want of employment, speculation after languid enterprise, confidence after distrust, national triumphs after national disasters. ”

“ I believe it to be probably derived from an native name of a tribe of Indians in that part of America. The Spanish Central Americans speak of Moscos. Juarros, A Spanish Central American author, in his History of Guatemala, names the Moscos among other Indians inhabiting the north-eastern corner of that tract of country now called Mosquito: and in the "Mosquito Correspondence" laid before Parliament in 1848, the inhabitants of Mosquito are called Moscos in the Spanish state-papers.
How and when would Mosco have become Mosquito? Was it a Spanish elongation of the name, or an English corruption? ”

“ The form Mosquito, or Moskito, or Muskito, (as the word is variously spelt in our old books) , is doubtless as old as the earliest English intercourse with the Indians of the Mosquito coast; and that may be as far back as about 1630: it is certainly as far back as 1650.
If the name came from the synonymous insect, would it have been given by the Spaniards or the English? Mosquito is the Spanish diminutive name of a fly: but what we call a mosquito, the Spaniards in Central America call by another name, sanchujo. The Spaniards had very little connexion at any time with the Mosquito Indians ”

“ The writer of this account says that the Mosquito Indians generally esteem themselves English:—
"And, indeed, they are extremely courteous to all Englishmen, esteeming themselves to be such, although some Jamaica men have very much abused them." ”

“ Rickman, their importance, in a statistical point of view, has been shown, but only to a very limited extent. In 1801, being entrusted with the duty of collecting and arranging the returns of the first actual enumeration of the population, he obtained from the clergyman of each parish a statement of the number of baptisms and burials recorded in the register book in every tenth year from 1700, and of marriages in every consecutive year from 1754, when the Marriage Act of George II. took effect. The results were published with the census returns of 1801 ”

“ In the Preface to the Enumeration Abstract of the Census of 1841, pp. 34-37., your correspondent will find information and statistics relative to the estimated population of England and Wales, 1570-1750, compiled from the parish registers, and—
"calculated on the supposition, that the registered baptisms, burials, and marriages, on an average of three years, in 1570, 1600, 1630, 1670, 1700, and 1750, bore the same proportion to the actual population as in the year 1801." ”

“ In such parishes, and in no others, a correct comparative estimate of the population may be formed.
The value of the parochial registers for statistical and historical purposes cannot be overrated; and yet their great loss in very recent times is beyond all doubt. It was given in evidence before the committee on registration, that out of seventy or eighty parishes for which Bridges made collections a century since, thirteen of the old registers have been lost, and three accidentally burnt. ”

“ At Bluefields where the writer has resided, which was one of the first places on the Mosquito coast frequented by English, and which derives its name from an old English buccaneer, there are no mosquitoes at all. At Grey Town, at the mouth of the river San Juan, there are plenty; but not more than in Jamaica, or in the towns of the interior state of Nicaragua. However names are not always given so as to be argument-proof.
{426}
How did the word mosquito come into our language? From the Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian? How old is it with us? ”

“ The prescribers and practisers of such "charms," as well as the lookers-on, have all unquestionable evidence of the efficacy of the prescriptions, in a great many cases: that is to say, the diseases for which the charms are prescribed are cured; and, according to the mode of reasoning prevalent with prescribers, orthodox and heterodox, they must be cured by them,—post hoc ergo propter hoc. Unhappily for the scientific study of diseases, the universal interference of ART in an active form renders it difficult to meet with pure specimens of corporeal maladies ”

“ Will you suffer me to add some further remarks on the subject of the Arabic numerals and cipher; as neither the querists nor respondents seem to have duly appreciated the immense importance of the step taken by introducing the use of a cipher. I would commence with observing, that we know of no people tolerably advanced in civilisation, whose system of notation had made such little progress, beyond that of the mere savage, as the Romans. The rudest savages could make upright scratches on the face of a rock, and set them in a row, to signify units ”

“ In reference to the observations of your correspondent "E.R.J.H.," he will find, upon closer examination, that no comparison approaching to accuracy can be made between the population of any place at different periods of the seventeenth century, founded upon the entries in parish registers of baptisms, births, or marriages. In 1653 the ecclesiastical registers ceased to contain much of the information they had before given. In that year was passed, "An Act how Marriages shall be solemnised and registered, and also for a Register of Births and Burials;" ”

“ In this endeavour to bring before us the men of past time, each "in his habit as he lived," the scrupulous accuracy with which Mr. Harding copies an old portrait has been well seconded by the engravers, so that this work is unrivalled for the fidelity with which it exhibits, as by a Daguerrotype, copies in little of some very curious portraits of old-world worthies. The collection is limited in extent ”

“ On the other hand, the Hebrews seem to have been provided with an alphabet as soon as they were to constitute a nation; and they were taught to use the successive letters of that alphabet to express the first ten numerals. In this way b and c might denote 2 and 3 just as well as those figures; and numbers might thus be expressed by single letters to the end of the alphabet, but no further. They were taught, however, and the Greeks learnt from them, to use the letters which follow the ninth as indications of so many tens; and those which follow the eighteenth as indicative of hundreds. ”

“ Applying the average of England to the parish {443} of Chart, the 120 baptisms in the years 1640-1659, if representing the actual births, would indicate a population of about 200 during that period; while the 246 entries in the previous twenty years would give upwards of 400 inhabitants. According to the several censuses, Chart contained 381 persons in 1801, and 424, 500, 610, 604, respectively, at the subsequent decades. ”

“ The warrant directs that he should be executed 'in the open street before Whitehall.' Lord Leicester tells us in his Journal, that he was 'beheaded at Whitehall Gate.' Dugdale, in his Diary, that he was 'beheaded at the gate of Whitehall;' and a single sheet of the time reserved in the British Museum, that 'the King was beheaded at Whitehall Gate.' There cannot, therefore, be a doubt that the scaffold was erected in front of the building facing the present Horse Guards. ”

“ It is sometimes ascribed to a man, and then it denotes a sly wicked fellow, that in a manner creeps to do mischief. See Mr. Nicholson's Catalogue."
In the 2d edition of Mr. Brockett's Glossary, we have: "Unletes, displacers or destroyers of the farmer's produce."
This provincial preservation of a word of such rare occurrence in Anglo-Saxon, and of which no example has yet been found in old English, is a remarkable circumstance. The word has evidently signified, like the Gothic, in the first place poor ”

“ The title is not Prodromus Philosophiæ Instauratio, which is not sense; but Prodromus Philosophiæ Instaurandæ (Forerunner of a philosophy to be constructed) . This Prodromus is a treatise of Campanella's, not, as Mr. Hallam says, of Adami. Adami published the Prodromus for Campanella, who was in prison; and he wrote a preface, in which he gives a list of other writings of Campanella, which he proposes to publish afterwards. What Mr. Hallam calls an "edition," was the first publication. ”

“ Sotheby and Co. will sell on Thursday next, a small but superb collection of drawings by modern artists; and on the following Monday will commence a six days' sale of the third portion of the important stock of prints of Messrs. Smith; comprising some of the works of the most eminent engravers of the continental and English schools, including a matchless collection of the works of the Master of Fontainebleau, engraver's proofs of book plates, and a few fine drawings. ”

“ In this poem, ludes and ledes are used indiscriminately, but most frequently in the sense of men, people. Sir Frederick Madden has shown, from the equivalent words in the French original of Robert of Brunne, "that he always uses the word in the meaning of possessions, whether consisting of tenements, rents, fees, &c.;" in short, wealth.
If, therefore, the word has this sense in old English, we might expect to find it in Anglo-Saxon, and I think it is quite clear that we have it at least in one instance. In the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, vol. ”

“ In no fewer than twenty English counties, the population, estimated as before, was absolutely less in 1670 than in 1630; and in Kent, the county in which Chart is situate, the decrease is striking: population of Kent in 1630, 189,212; in 1670, 167,398; in 1700, 157,833; in 1750, 181,267; and in 1801, the enumerated population was 307,624.
Your correspondent might also find it useful to consult Sir William Petty's Political Arithmetic, the various documents compiled at the different censuses, and the Reports of the Registrar-General. ”

“ Journal of Sir William Beeston.—In reply to the inquiry of "C." (No. 25. p. 400) , I can state that a journal of Sir William Beeston is now preserved in the British Museum (MS. Add. 12,424.) , and was presented to the national collection in 1842, by Charles Edward Long, Esq. It is a folio volume, entirely autograph, and extends from Dec. 10, 1671, when Beeston was in command of the Assistance frigate in the West Indies, to July 21, 1673 ”

“ The writer says that Jeremy, king of the Mosquitos, in Charles II.'s reign, after formally ceding his country to officers sent to him by the Governor of Jamaica to receive the cession, went to Jamaica, and thence to England, where he was generously received by Charles II., "who had him often with him in his private parties of pleasure, admired his activity, strength, and manly accomplishments ”

“ The non-appearance of my name as a querist has been rather fortuitous, and it shall now be made evident that I am neither so rich in materials, nor so proud in spirit, as to decline such assistance as may be derived from the information and courtesy of other contributors to the "Notes and Queries."
1. Did the following critical remarks on Shakspere, by Edward Phillips, appear verbatim in the Thesaurus of J. Buchlerus, 1669?
The Bodleian library has the London edition of 1636; and the British Museum that of 1652. Wood cites an edition of 1669. I transcribe from that of 1679. ”

“ Mr. Thorpe has not translated the word, nor is it noticed in his Glossary; but I think there can be no doubt that it should be rendered by goods, chattels, or wealth, i.e., movable property.
This will be even more obvious from an extract given by Bishop Nicholson, in the preface to Wilkin's Leges Saxonicæ p. vii. It is part of the oath of a Scotish baron of much later date, and the sense here is unequivocal:—
"I becom zour man my liege king in land, lith2, life and lim, warldly honour, homage, fealty, and leawty, against all that live and die." ”

“ Ballad of "The Wars in France" (No. 20. p. 318.) .—Your correspondent "NEMO" will find two versions of the ballad commencing,
"As our king lay musing on his bed,"
in appendices 20 and 21 to Sir Harris Nicolas's History of the Battle of Agincourt, 2nd edit. They are not, I believe, in the first edition. I have a copy of the ballad myself, which I took down a few years ago, together with the quaint air to which it is sung, from the lips of an old miner in Derbyshire. My copy does not differ very much from the first of those given by Sir H. Nicolas. ”

“ We naturally expect, that in official correspondence, the public boards, through their proper officers, would be very precise in assigning to every person his proper title, in the address of a letter. ”