72
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. 111. JA*. 28, m
PLOUGHING THE SANDS" (9 th S. iii. 2).
ME. CURRY has been as unfortunate in his
search in the indexes to ' N. & Q.' as in that to
Juvenal. Although under neither ' Ploughing '
nor 'Arenas,' there is in the former, under
' Proverbs and Phrases ' : " Plough the sands,"
and in the latter, under 'Aratro,' a reference
to 'Sat.' vii. 49, 50, where words may be
found with something more than a trace
of the origin of the phrase employed by Mr.
Asquith :
Nos tatnen hoc agimus, tenuique in pulvere sulcos Ducimus, et littus sterili ver sanms aratro. Our familiar friend " scribendi cacoethes " lies in close proximity. KILLIGREW.
The source from which Burton took the proverb may fairly be supposed, possibly, to be the 'Proverbs of Erasmus'; for he has among these "Arare littus" with reference to Ausonius, and " Harense mandas semina " with reference to the same lines from Ovid, in the epistle of (Enone to Paris, which MR. J. T. CURRY quotes. They come under the title of " Inanis opera." ED. MARSHALL, F.S.A.
THE SURNAME WARD (9 th S. iii. 8). Just as Wright appears in the specialized forms Cartwright, Ploughwright, Shipwright, or Wheelwright, so we have such specialized forms of Ward as Hay ward, the hedge warden, or Steward, the sty-ward who looked after the domestic animals, as well as Woodward, Doorward, Beeward, and Bearward. Warden is a doublet of guardian, as guard is of ward : it means simply a watchman or guard. The form in early documents is le Ward, not de Ward as your correspondent states, showing that Ward was an official, not a territorial name. ISAAC TAYLOR.
Your correspondent under this head asks if all the cases of the surname Ward are derived from the same source. This may be the case in England other readers better qualified than myself will perhaps decide this point but I can testify that in Ireland the surname Ward is a contraction of Mac Ward, or Mac- an-Ward, or in the Gaelic spelling Mac-an- Bhaird, meaning Son of the Bard.
JAMES PL ATT, Jun.
Guards and wards were common enough to set many men up with a surname indicative of occupation. ST. SWITHIN.
Miss LINWOOD'S PICTURE GALLERIES (8 th S xii. 449, 517 ; 9 th S. i. 314 ; ii. 275, 512). Miss Linwood's needlework pictures were all sole at Messrs. Christie & Manson's after her death and the collection was dispersed. I have seer very few of them, but those few were copies
f pictures by Morland, and were really very
remarkable works of art. T. V. L.
GULLS (9 th S. iii. 6). This is not a reply, but a further query. For some years past sea- gulls have been coming up annually, before and during a storm, from Cardiff, along the Taff and its tributary the Cynon, to the Aberdare Valley, a distance of twenty miles from the sea. This year, however, they have been here
- or some months past. What is the explana-
tion of this apparent change in the habitat of the gull? D. M. K.
'THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN' (5 th S. viii- 389, 515 ; 9 th S. ii. 536). This book, having been published in 1657, could not have been written by Lord Chesterfield, who was not born till 1694.
George Ballard in his ' Memoirs of British Ladies,' published in 1752, argues long and ably to prove that Dame Dorothy Packington was the author of ' The Whole Duty of Man ' and ' The Ladies' Calling.' Ballard says :
"It has been very surprising to me to hear the many shifts and evasions which have been made use of on this occasion by several gentlemen to deprive the fair sex of the honour of these exalted perform- ances. Her learned friends who were concerned in those [i.e., Dame D. P.'s books] were too well ac- quainted with men and manners not to understand what kind of estimate the generality of mankind would put upon the production of a woman's pen."
After considerable research last year at the British Museum, I am convinced that to Dame Dorothy Packington belongs the honour of being the author of that for many years much read (and standard) work ' The Whole Duty of Man.' HARRIETT MC!LQUHAM.
Staverton House, near Cheltenham.
BLACK BLOTTING PAPER (9 th S. ii. 506, 537). During more than forty years' service in the Foreign Office I never saw nor heard of black blotting paper being used, either there or in any of our Chanceries abroad ; but I find upon inquiry that the idea is not merely due to Mr. Upward's remarkable powers of inven- tion. The black blotting paper is (or was) used at the India Office, and was supplied by the Stationery Office. Lord Kimberley im- ported it into the Foreign Office for his own use, but soon gave it up. One objection to it is that it does not fulfil its purpose, as the ink dries grey upon it, and enables the writing to be traced. ' T. V. L.
ACORUS CALAMUS (9 th S. ii. 305, 377, 457, 476). I have received a well-preserved speci- men of this plant from the moat of Harving- ton Hall, a fine old fourteenth-century mansion near Kidderminster, which I shall be happy
