Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/221

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9" S. IX. MARCH 15, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


213


London ' it is stated, although the exhibition was already open, that "when complete it will form an interesting object to the curious "; and the grand room was not 117, but 107 ft. long at least so it appears in my own copy of that year of this most valuable compendium of the time. In another copy in my possession, dated 1818, the " show " was still prospering, and the grand room is still described as 107 ft. long. The error with regard to the date is, however, traceable, probably, to Timbs's * Curiosities of London.'

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. Wimbledon Park Road.

BELL INSCRIPTION AT PUNCKNOWLE, DORSET (3 rd S. vii. 137 ; 9 th S. vii. 365 ; viii. 22, 153). It has occurred to me that "lathers," in "must ancient lathers still maintayrie," should per- haps be read "leathers," and be understood as referring to the whit-leather bawdricks by which the clappers were commonly suspended in 1629, and which required a great deal of "maintaining" in order to keep them in repair. J. T. F.

Durham.

WINDOW GLASS (9 th S. ix. 87, 150). The unexpected always happens was the veritable dictum of one of our greatest statesmen, and it certainly has happened, so far as I am concerned, in the communications of MESSRS. ST. GLAIR BADDELEY and R. B R in your issue of 22 February. Until I read them I had fully believed the .Romans were not acquainted with window glass. I had some correspondence with my friend MR. G. C. WARDEN upon the matter, and had referred to Pliny as the earliest and best authority. That indefatigable author, in naming all kinds of glass made up to his time, omits all mention of the use of it for windows. He mentions mirrors, but says they were made of obsidian, and that imitation obsidian was made. He speaks of Scaurus, the stepson of Sylla, having built a temple, and says the first story was of marble and the second story of glass (book xxxvi. c. 24) ; but in c. 64 he explains this by saying mosaic pave- ments were made in the time of Sylla, but now they have been transferred to arches and panels, as seen in the walls of the temple of Scaurus" I looked at Rees's and other works of the same kind, and found only negative information ; and, lastly, I cannot remember, after thirty-six years' regular study of ' N. & Q.,' to have seen anything oi an affirmative character. Small pieces o1 glass of various colours were undoubted!} used in mosaic work, but this fact does not indicate window glass. One would like to


enow something more about MR. ST. CLAIR

SADDELEY'S find. Would it be top much to

ask him if the date of the destruction of the

ilia at Antium is known to him ? A villa

night have been built many years before

A.D., and if it were not destroyed for some

-hree or four hundred years there was time

or the use of glass for the windows to have

oeen adopted. May I be permitted to ask

^R. BADDELEY further if the panes of glass

ound at Pompeii are still in existence ?

F. CLAYTON. Morden.

SLEEPING GARMENTS (3 rd S. iv. 246, 332, 439 ; vi. 316 ; xi. 51 ; xii. 175). A quarto volume of Bible pictures, to which I drew attention in 8 th S. x. 435, was published at Amsterdam about the year 1700. In plate 16 Jacob blesses his sons, sitting up in a cano- pied bed, supported by a pillow like a small cotton-bale. He is evidently nude, though the part of him from the waist down is covered up by the bedclothes. But in plate 71 Hezekiah lies in a canopied bed, clothed in an ample nightgown, and receives the prophet. His crown and sceptre are laid on an orna- mental chest, and there are other signs of modern work which cannot be specified here. RICHARD H. THORNTON.

Portland, Oregon.

LADY NOTTINGHAM (9 th S. ix. 128). This lady's thirty children do not constitute a record in maternity. I quote from the l Diet. Nat. Biog., } vol. xxiii. p. 80, as follows :

" Thomas Greenhill, writer on embalming, son of William Greenhill, of Greenhill, at Harrow, Middle- sex, a counsellor-at-law and secretary to General Monck, was born in 1681, after his father's death. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of William White, of London, who had by one husband thirty- nine children, all (it is said) born alive and baptized, and all single births except one. An addition was made to the arms of the family in 1698 in com- memoration of this extraordinary case of fecundity. There are portraits of Elizabeth Greenhill at Walling Wells, near Worksop, and at Lowesby Hall, Leicestershire."

One of this family, a William Greenhill. was an early Governor of Harrow School (1586-1613); and in 1621 Joseph Greenhill was the first university scholar elected from that school. A. R. BAYLEY.

St. Margaret's, Malvern.

CHOCOLATE (9 th S. viii. 160, 201, 488 ; ix. 53). Evidence of a still earlier use of chocolate is intimated by the publication in 1652 of a book entitled 'Chocolate, the Nut of the Cocoa Tree, manufactured in a peculiar man- ner ' (vide Robert Watt's * Bibliotheca Britan- nica,' s.v. 'Chocolate'). This would be ten