Various

“ Jeremiah Ainsworth was resident in the neighbourhood of Manchester, and so early as 1761 was in correspondence with the editors of the Mathematical Magazine. He subsequently associated with Mr. George Taylor, a gentleman of kindred habits, then resident in the immediate vicinity, and these worthy veterans of science, as time wore on, collected around them a goodly array of pupils and admirers, and hence may truly be said not only to have laid the foundation of the "Oldham Society," but also to have been the fathers of the Lancashire school of geometers. ”

“ Stewart's writings were of a kind calculated to render them peculiarly attractive to the non-academic school of English geometers, they remain to this day less generally known than the writings of any geometer of these kingdoms." The same remarks, in a slightly qualified form, may be applied to most of the writings of Simson; for although his edition of Euclid is now the almost universally adopted text-book of geometry in England, at the time of its first appearance in 1756 it did not differ so much from existing translations as to attract particular attention by the novelty of its contents. ”

“ MEANING OF "BAWN."
Bawn (Vol. i, p. 440.) has been explained as "the outer fortification, inclosing the court-yard of an Irish castle or mansion, and was generally composed of a wall with palisadoes, and sometimes flankers."
The word bawn or bane (the a pronounced as in the English word hat) is still applied in the south of Ireland to the spot of ground used as a place for milking the cows of a farm, which, for obvious reasons, is generally close to the farm-house. ”

“ We have every reason to believe that the publication of Newton's Principia had a powerful effect in diffusing a semi-geometrical taste amongst the academical class of students in this country, and it is equally certain that this diffusion became much more general, when Motte, in 1729, published his translation of that admirable work. The nature of the contents of the Principia, however, precluded the possibility of its being adapted to form the taste of novices in the study of geometry ”

“ A powerful inducement to the study of pure geometry was therefore created by the publication of Motte's translation: ordinary students had here a desirable object to obtain by its careful cultivation, which hitherto had not existed, and hence when Professor Simpson, of Woolwich, published his Algebra and the Elements of Geometry in 1745 and 1747, a select reading public had been formed which hailed these excellent works as valuable accessions to the then scanty means of study. ”

“ Now the milking field was, and is always kept in grass, and necessarily receiving a good deal of manure, would usually be white from the growth of daisies and white clover. Hence such a field would be called the white field: and from this to the general application of the phrase to grass land the transition is easy and natural. It may be proper to add, that in Kerry, particularly, the word is pronounced bawn, in speaking Irish; but the same person will call it bane, if mentioning such land in English. ”

“ In 1773 appeared the Synopsis of Data for the Construction of Triangles, which was followed in 1774 by his valuable Dissertations on the Geometrical Analysis of the Ancients; and although the author used an unjustifiable freedom with the writings of others, Dr. Stewart's more especially, it is nevertheless a work which probably did more to advance the study of the ancient geometry than any other separate treatise which could be named. ”

“ Mr. Halliwell's Letters on the Progress of Science sufficiently show that the study of geometry was almost a nonentity in England previously to the commencement of the eighteenth century. Before this period Dr. Dee, the celebrated author of the preliminary discourse to Billingsley's Euclid, had indeed resided at Manchester (1595) , but his residence here could effect little in flavour of geometry, seeing, as is observed by a writer in the Penny Cyclopædia—
"The character of the lectures on Euclid was in those days extremely different from that of our own time ... ”

“ Harvey, and answer the questions proposed, that inquiries which had hitherto been "locked up in the deep, and to them unapproachable recesses of Plato, Pappus, Apollonius and Euclid * * porisms and loci, sections of ratio and of space, inclinations and tangencies,—subjects confined among the ancients to the very greatest minds, (became) familiar to men whose condition in life was, to say the least, most unpropitious for the successful prosecution of such elevated and profound pursuits." ”

“ Before the practice of housing cattle became general, every country gentleman's house had its bawn or bane. The necessity for having such a place well fenced, and indeed fortified, in a country and period when cattle formed the chief wealth of all parties, and when the country was infested by Creaghadores and Rapparees, is obvious; and hence the care taken in compelling the "undertakers in Ulster" to have at least "a good bawn after the Irish fashion." In Munster the word bane or bawn is used to express land that has been long in grass ”

“ Fully satisfied with pursuing their ordinary courses of investigation, they have scarcely ever stopped to inquire who first started the subject of their contemplations; nor have they evinced much more assiduity to ascertain the how, the when, or in what favoured locality he had his existence: and hence the innumerable misappropriations of particular discoveries, the unconscious traversing of already exhausted fields of research, and many of the bickerings which have taken place amongst the rival claimants for the honour of priority. ”

“ Churchyards—Epitaphs.—Up to the time of the Norman Conquest, churchyards appear to have been considered almost as sacred as churches; but soon after that period, though regarded as places of sanctuary, they were often used for profane purposes. I recollect reading of fairs and rustic sports being held in them as early as John's reign, but unfortunately I have not been an observer of your motto, and know not now where to refer for such instances. ”

“ They consist of an edition of Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Merchant of Venice, and the third satire of Horace, copiously illustrated with notes and woodcuts, intended to prove that in the works in question, in common with "all the classics and the different specimens of the arts which have come down to us from the ancients, no part of them is to be understood without supposing that they were mere vehicles of knowledge, not intended to meet the eye or the understanding on the first inspection or perusal;" ”

“ The pages of the Ladies' Diary, the Mathematician, and the Mathematical Exercises, of which these gentlemen were severally editors and contributors, soon began to exhibit a goodly array of geometrical exercises, whilst their lists of correspondents evince a gradual increase in numbers and ability. The publication of Stewart's General Theorems and Simson's edition of Euclid, in 1746 and 1756, probably to some extent assisted the movement ”

“ The murderers then held council as to the best mode of concealing their crime, and it was determined that they should mutilate and dispose of the body. They cut off the head, Mrs. Hayes holding a pail to catch the blood; and she proposed that the head should be boiled until the flesh came from the skull. This advice was rejected on account of the time which the process suggested would occupy, and Billings and Wood carried the head in the pail (it was at night) to the Horseferry at Westminster, and there cast it into the Thames. ”

“ Is there any ground for believing that our churchyards were ever thus consecrated on the south side of the church to the exclusion of the north?
J. Sansom.
Hatfield—Consecration of Chapel there.—Le Neve, in his Lives of Protestant Bishops (ii. 144.) , states, that Richard Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, went to Hatfield, 6th May, 1615, to consecrate the chapel in the house there lately built by Robert, Earl of Salisbury. I have applied to the Registrar of Lincoln diocese, in which Hatfield was (until recently) locally situated, for a copy of the notarial act of consecration ”

“ III. c. 48., women convicted in all cases of treason, shall receive judgment to be drawn to the place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck till dead."
The law, therefore, under which a woman could be put to death by burning, was repealed in 1790.
Blackstone elsewhere says:—
"The humanity of the English nation has authorized, by a tacit consent, an almost general mitigation of such part of those judgments as savours of torture and cruelty: a sledge or hurdle being usually allowed to such traitors as are condemned to be drawn ”

“ It is not improbable that other reasons, equally cogent, or perhaps corrective of several of the preceding, may be advanced by some of your more learned correspondents, whose experience and means of reference are superior to my own. Should any such {60}be induced to offer additions or corrections to what is here attempted, and to extend the inquiry into other localities, your pages will afford a most desirable medium through which to compare notes on a very imperfectly understood but most important subject of inquiry. ”

“ Should any one be so courageous as to follow the appearance, it usually makes its retreat with its eyes fronting {53}the pursuer, and either sinks into the earth with a strange noise, or is lost upon the slightest momentary inattention. ”

“ Hence it would seem that many, and by no means improbable, reasons may be assigned for "the very remarkable circumstance of the geometrical analysis of the ancients having been cultivated with eminent success in the northern counties of England, and particularly in Lancashire." ”

“ I wish to suggest to any of your legal or other well-informed correspondents, who will have the kindness to take a little trouble for the benefit of your general readers, that an instructive and interesting communication might be made by noting down the periods at which the various more revolting punishments under the English law were repealed, or fell into disuse. For instance, when torture, such as the rack, was last applied; when embowelling alive and quartering ceased to be practised ”

“ Three only of his works in bronze are now known with certainty to exist: the equestrian statue of Charles I. [at Charing Cross] , a bust of the same monarch with a casque in the Roman style [now at Stourhead] , and a statue in armour of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Lord High Chamberlain and Chancellor of Oxford. The last was given to the University by T., Earl of Pembroke, about the time of the restoration."
The "several famous statues in brasse" alluded to by the writer of the Diary above quoted, were probably those which afterwards ornamented the gardens of St. James's Palace. ”

“ Harvey, at the York meeting of the British Association in 1831, eloquently announced "that when Playfair, in one of his admirable papers in the Edinburgh Review, expressed a fear that the increasing taste for analytical science would at length drive the {58}ancient geometry from its favoured retreat in the British Isles ”

“ TO BOOKSELLERS, PRINTERS, STATIONERS, and LITERARY MEN in General, a Country Business, established upwards of Fifty Years, and yielding a net profit of 300l. per annum, is now to be sold a great Bargain: it embraces Printing, Bookselling, and Stationery ”

“ The Latin word cinis, which denotes ashes produced by burning, is derived from the Greek, which denotes natural dust, I forget whether burnt ashes also.
C. B.
Dr. Maginn's Miscellanies (Vol. i., p. 470.) .—Mr. Tucker Hunt (brother of Mr. F. Knight Hunt, author of The Fourth Estate, a History of Newspapers, &c. &c.) ”

“ Similar remarks evidently apply to Horrocks and Crabtree (1641) ; for although both were natives of Lancashire, and the latter a resident in the vicinity of Manchester, their early death would prevent the exertion of any considerable influence; nor does it appear that they ever paid any attention to the study of the ancient geometry. Richard Towneley, Esq., of Towneley (1671) , is known to have been an ardent cultivator of science, but his residence was principally in London. ”

“ With this view he published a translation of Vieta's restoration of Apollonius on Tangencies, in 1764, and to this, in the second edition of 1771, was added the Treatise on Spherical Tangencies, by Fermat, which has since been reprinted in the Appendix to the Ladies' Diary for 1840. In 1767 appeared Emerson's Treatise on Conic Sections; a work which, notwithstanding its manifest defects, contributed not a little to aid the student in his approaches to the higher geometry, but whose publication would probably have been rendered unnecessary, had Dr. ”

“ You do not seem to have any copy whatever brought to your notice. This collection was, it appears from the Centifolium Lutheranum of Fabricius (p. 484.) , bequeathed by the Duke to the library at Helmstad.
Novus.
Robert Deverell (Vol. i., p. 469.) .—If my information is too scanty to deserve a place among the Replies, you may treat it as a supplement to Dr. Rimbault's Query. Mr. Deverell also published (according to Lowndes) A New View of the Classics and Ancient Arts, tending to show the invariable Connexion with the Sciences, 4to. Lond. 1806 ”

“ The entries in the parish register noticed by Arun, refer to these taxes. Query, Were our ancestors justified in boasting that they were "free-born" Englishmen as long as one of these taxes existed?
C. Ross.
M. or N. (Vol. i., p. 415.) .—These must, I think, be the initials of some words, and not originating in a corruption of nom, as suggested. We have in the marriage service:—
"'I publish the banns of marriage between M. of —— and N. of ——.'
"The curate shall say unto the man,
"M. 'Wilt thou have this woman,' &c. ”