234
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 B. i. M AB . is,
said she, 'it is impossible to avoid vain thoughts.' I was permitted once to visit her. She was cheerful and polite, and conversed pleasantly. The room was clean, bat had no other furniture than a mattress, a table with a crucifix and a book, a stool which she gave me to sit on, and a picture over the chimney of St. Veronica displaying her handkerchief, with the miraculous figure of Christ's bleeding face on it, which she explained to me with great seriousness. She looked pale, but was never sick; and I give it as another instance, on how small an income life and health may be supported." W. F. P. Stockley.
Resemblances between Semitic and Mexican Languages (12 S. i. 70).—At the end of the second part of Capt. Marryat's 'Diary in America' is Appendix II., 'Discourse on the Evidences of the American Indians being the Descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel.' A good many writers on the subject are quoted or referred to. The languages and customs of Mexico and Peru are particularly noticed. Some words and religious customs said to be of Hebrew origin are cited, but the words mentioned by Mr. King are not given.
I am referring to the Paris edition of the 'Diary,' 1840.
I do not vouch in any way for the claims put forward. Robert Pierpoint.
It may not be superfluous to note that the Hebrew meaning of the first sentence quoted lay Mr. W. L. King is not at all the same as the alleged meaning in the Maya language. Mervarid.
MABBLE BUST OF SIB ISAMBABD BBUNEL
BY CHANTBEY (12 S. i. 148). Try the
Institution of Civil Engineers in Great
George Stieet, Westminster. L. L. K.
TIGEBS' WHISKEBS (11 S. xii. 481 ; 12 S. i 37, 118). The extraction of a tiger's whiskers in order to deprive him of power to do harm is rooted in a solar myth.
In tropical climes the sun at rising is beneficent ; at noon, malevolent ; at setting impotent.
The sun at noon was represented sym- bolically by a lion's head, with bushy mane to depict his rays ; and the setting sun (being without rays or power) by a maneless lion the former denoting the sun in power, the latter in weakness.
Hence hair, representing the sun's rays -or power, was deemed a sign of virility, whilsl the shaveling, shorn of hirsute adornments was regarded as effeminate.
Shaving, or letting the hair grow long, entered largely into many religious anc
domestic ceremonies ; and hair as an emblem
of power was much used in magic and
charms.
When the Bengali cuts or, more correctly, Durns off the tiger's whiskers, he is destroy- "ng his power, he is performing by imitative rites the solar process of the setting of the sun.
But as the god of a conquered race aecomes the devil of the conquerors, so differing views on long and short hair have come and gone. H. A. HABBIS.
The ideas as to this may vary in different parts of India, but as regards Bengal, in which I have had considerable experience, I never saw or heard of a native singeing or burning off a tiger's whiskers ; although, unless very carefully watched, natives pull these out and take them away to use as charms. This was well known to all my sporting friends. ALEX. THOMS.
St. Andrews, Fife.
E. CASHIN (12 S. i. 111). .F. Cashin was a painter in water-colours of architectural subjects, during the first half of the nine- teenth century, and belonged to the English School of Painters. A work by him, entitled ' Street in Bristol,' bearing the date 1825, is to be seen in the South Kensington Museum. E. E. BABKEB.
The John Ry lands Library, Manchester.
See 9 S. ii. 327, where I asked for informa- tion about this artist, of whose local work I have a specimen dated 1823. In October, 1830, the quack St. John Long was convicted at the Old Bailey of causing the death of a Miss E. Cashin, from Bristol or its neighbour- hood, by ignorantly treating her for con- sumption. W. B. H.
EFFECT OF FBEEZING ON THE HUMAN BODY (v. sub ' Memory at the Moment of Death,' 12 S. i. 49, 178). I have lived many years in Canada, and have done rough winter work in many parts, and have myself been (slightly) frozen on various occasions : nose, cheeks, ears, backs of hands (when driving), &c. Before the freezing takes place one feels the part very cold and stinging, as is the familiar experience, but after the part is frozen there is absolutely no discomfort in it at all ; one does not know it is frozen unless the hand goes to the place, when one feels a hard bony substance without any circulation in it, where there should be soft flesh. One will meet a man with a big dead white patch showing on his face, and stop him, to tell him, " Your cheek is frozen," when
