9* s. m. MAR. 4, mi NOTES AND QUERIES.
163
demolished some time ago, the land being
still vacant.
A little removed from this spot, but still in the locality, is a thoroughfare known as Old Rochester Row, extending from Rochester Row to Artillery Eow. The improvement of this has been the bete noire of the Westminster Vestry for a score of years. Now the houses are down, and although not all that can be desired is being done, the road will be widened, an improvement greatly needed, toward which the Army and Navy Stores have contributed liberally, thereby lessening the cost to the ratepayers. Here some further demolishing will probably take place, as the Stores have purchased all the houses on the east side of Artillery Row, Artillery Buildings, Grey Coat Place, Brunswick Place, Bond Court, and Mill's Buildings, the last named and some of the other houses being already down.
A large portion of Great Smith Street has been pulled down in order that the road- way might be widened, as the principal way to the Church House and the St. Margaret's and St. John's Free Public Library, a number of shops and small private houses being removed for this purpose. Orchard Street has been widened, some very miserable tene- ments having given place to a somewhat ornate structure, to be known as Orchard House, and occupied by Messrs. P. S. King & Co., the well-known Parliamentary book- sellers, a part being reserved for St. Ann's Restaurant. A wholesale clearance has been effected in Tufton (formerly Bowling) Street, Nos. 3 to 13 having been cleared away, and upon a portion of the site are now being erected the headquarters and drill-hall of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Fusi- liers ; the other portion being destined, according to rumour, for a parish hall for St. John's, Westminster. At 21, Great College Street, where there was a fire some time ago, a good style of building has been erected, used for offices. Here formerly stood the house occupied by Ginger, the old West- minster School bookseller, a name well re- membered and universally respected by old scholars. King Street is rapidly progressing to total effacement: Nos. 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 were sold on 17 January, and are cleared away ; the police-station is to be evacuated in March, when that will follow ; and most likely Nos. 1, 3, and 5 (No. 3 being the " Old Blue Boar's Head ") will go before long, arid the material portion of this old-world thoroughfare will finally vanish for good. Messrs. Grindlay & Co., the bankers, have removed from the world-renowned 55, Parlia-
ment Street into a building erected next
door, and numbered 54. This occupies the
site of two small shops, one of which,
while in the occupation of a jeweller and
watchmaker, was the scene of the murder of
one of the assistants, for which crime the
murderer was duly done to death at the Old
Bailey.
I fear the records of my morning walk have extended to a greater length than I intended at starting ; but perhaps the result may be useful to some one at some time.
W. E. HARLAND-OXLEY.
14, Artillery Buildings, Victoria Street, S.W.
ROGER BACON AND THE TELESCOPE. It has
often been claimed on behalf of Roger Bacon
that he invented the telescope more than three
centuries before it was applied to making
astronomical discoveries early in the seven-
teenth century. That he had such a concep-
tion of the nature of the refraction of light
(derived, apparently, principally from the work
of the Arabic writer Alhazen, as the latter
was to a great extent from the ' Optics ' of
Ptolemy, only known to us through a Latin
translation of an Arabic translation) as to
conceive such a thing possible seems clear
from several passages in his 'Opus Majus.'
But, as is remarked by Mr. J. B. Bridges in
the interesting introduction to his recent
edition of that work (p. Ixxiii):
"No evidence is forthcoming for his having effected the simple combination of two convex lenses, or of a convex with a concave lens, on which the power of telescopic vision depends. All that can be claimed for him is that he was the first de- finitely and explicitly to bring the problem forward, leaving it for after generations to solve."
We may also refer to a note by the same writer on part v. cap. i. of the ' Opus Majus ' itself (vol. ii. p. 159), where, after quoting Whewell's remark, that we may find in Roger Bacon a tolerably distinctive explanation of the effect of a convex glass, he adds :
" But of the combination of two lenses necessary for the construction of the telescope there is no evidence whatever."
In the excellent ' Short History of Astro- nomy' which has lately been published by Mr. A. Berry, of King's College, Cambridge, it is pointed out how little the claim made for Bacon is helped by his statement that wonderful telescopic magnification had been produced so far back as the time of Julius Caesar, who had surveyed by this means from the coast of Gaul the positions held by the Britons. It may be of interest to quote his exact words (part v. cap. iii. in vol, ii. p. 165 of the edition by Mr. Bridges) ;---
