Replies. INTRODUCTION OF AGRICULTURAL MACHINES. (cliii. 347). FOR comparison with parallel happenings in England, the following notes upon the abandonment of the flail for threshing rye, wheat and oats in the United States in the nineteenth century, may be of interest. As is generally admitted in dictionaries, various European devices for threshing grain culminated at the end of the eighteenth century in an invention by Andrew Meikle, of Knows Mill, Whitekirk, East Lothian, in 1788 (British patent 1645, April 9, 1788) of a rapidly revolving cylinder, armed with paddle-shaped beaters (altered into pegs in the United States, 1828). The dictionaries began to commend this machine, and condemn the flail, soon after 1800 (cf. Reese's 'Encyclopædia' 1800 to 1810; Domestic Encyclopædia,' by A. F. M. Willich, American Edition, Mease, 1804), and the very efficient apparatus would have immediately abolished the flail, if a practical power had been found to turn it. Reese speaks of wind-mills, water-wheels, and portable steam-engines (common after 1820) and a large cogged wheel with counter-gear turned by horses on a turnstile. But none of these devices, though available on large English estates, found favour with the small American farmer, except the turnstile (introduced in southern England according to Dickson's Dictionary of Agriculture' in 1805), which began to appear in Pennsylvania about 1820-30, and continued in rare use until about 1890. Nevertheless the comparatively expensive turnstile took up too much barn space, and was by no means a general favourite. In spite of it the flail continued in common use until the mid century, when it received its death-blow from a very ingenious, previously unknown apparatus, which had originated, not in England or the United States, but in France. nik der Vorzeit,' Englemann, Leipzig, 1914, article Tretmachinen '). a man or Abundant evidence in old books shows that the ancient tread-mill in which animal walked inside or outside a wheel revolving vertically, or outside a wheel revolving horizontally, differed materially in construction from this apparatus of Guilbaud, and of Feldhaus is right, Meikle, whose patent is briefly described in the British Chronological Index of Patents,' as capable of being worked by cattle, wind, water or any other power,' can have known nothing of any such rolling platform. It would seem probable, therefore, that the power apparatus, applied to a threshing-machine in France, seen by your correspondent, must have been Guilbaud's, while any evidence to the contrary which might show that the rolling platform was known in Scotland in 1788, throwing light on this obscure subject, and thereby upsetting Guilband's claim to the invention, would be of great historic interest. com However this may be, about sixty patent grants, listed in the United States Catalogue of Patents between 1831 and 1845 and about two hundred between 1845 and 1870 under the name Horse Power" probably refer oftener to this wide-spread device than to the paratively rare horse turnstile. Indicating continued attempts to plagiarise or improve Guilbaud's invention, they show, with other evidence, that for forty years at least the rolling platform was considered vital to the suc cess of machine-threshing in the United States. At this point, and by the time the, then new, steam-run American factory, circa 1840, had begun to manufacture, cheapen and distribute this apparatus, the flail would have gone entirely out of use, but for a few local necessities and customs in the United States, as follows. First, the straight straw-stalks required to bind wheat, rye and oats by hand, had to be threshed with the flail because the American threshing-machine tore the straw to pieces. Secondly, buckwheat for buckwheat cakes," and general grain, on farms too small for the threshing-machine, was still threshed with the flail. This very efficient, cheap, portable device, not properly acknowledged in American books, and not accounted for in Knight's 'American Mechanical Dictionary,' was a new variety of On these two battle-grounds, the flail held tread-mill, called the tread-power, an out for a few more years, even against inclined rolling platform, on which horses or machine-binding (for wheat, rye and oats) as cattle walked, so as to revolve a flywheel long as the " reaper and binder," 1870-80, attached to the threshing cylinder above men- bound with wire, because wire got into the tioned, invented in 1822 by A. P. Gilbaud straw and killed cows. But when string bind of Nantes, and for which a German patenting succeeded wire, about 1895, the flail suc cumbed on these points, after which nothing but the still continued need of straw binding for Indian corn, which the machines would not bind, saved the flail for a few more years, until now, 1927 (when machines are beginning to reap Indian corn) hanks of tarred twine to bind by hand its heavy stalks, sold at country stores, satisfy the farmer for this purpose. Finally, as typical of the present situation, the farmer who can now buy buckwheat meal in packages at country stores, need no longer thresh buckwheat. Before the last small farmer in this part of Eastern Pennsylvania to economise with a flail died at Peters Corner, Bucks County, in 1924, the flail had already become obsolete. It is unknown to the present young generation; if still found in use in some remote mountain district, it would be a rare survival. where the In England, where the large and expensive threshing apparatus above noted would have been continually in use on large estates, theshing-machines were constructed not to spoil the straw, and where straw thatching (never common in the United States on account of the abundance of shingles) may be still practised, the above conditions may have varied somewhat, either to prolong or shorten the existence of the flail, which is still (1927) in full swing in China, and probably slowly going out of use in Japan. Fonthill, Doylestown, HENRY C. MERCER. Pennsylvania, U.S.A. "for upwards. Francis Hobler is described as Reference to Boase's Modern English Biography' shows that there was a second Francis who was solicitor to the Licensed Victuallers' Hobler, son of the clerk to the Lord Mayor, Numismatic Society of London. Company, 1837-1860, and Secretary of the It seems more likely, therefore, that it was he, and not the Mansion House Clerk, to whom the Guildhall owes the presentation of the collection of tokens from Henry Benjamin Beaufoy, citizen and distiller. The date, May, 1856, which MR. NEWTON is able to give to Francis Hobler's signed declaration that he was the person who formed the collection, is-as MR. NEWTON points out conclusive evidence that Hobler was still living at the time that Burn published the second edition of the catalogue (1855). It is, nevertheless, made pretty clear by the correspondence which took place between the Library Committee and Hobler (March, 1850, to June, 1853) that the latter was in charge of the compilation of the 1st edition of the catalogue during this period. THE BEAUFOY CABINET OF TOKENS -ITS COLLECTORS AND ITS CATALOGUE (cliii. 273, 317). In MR. E. E. NEWTON'S interesting commentary on my article dealing with Francis Hobler's rather mysterious connection with the Beaufoy Cabinet of seventeenth century London Tokens, I am inclined to agree, however, with the Hobler is referred to as having held the posi- conjecture that Jacob H. Burn was employed tion of Clerk at the Mansion House Police to write up the descriptions of the specimens. Court. The writer bases this statement on a The prefaces to both the editions are recollection of having come across some doubtedly Burn's, and it was he who was references in 'The Town' or Paul Pry,' responsible for the unaccountable negligence some such scurrilous publication of about of omitting to state by whom the collection the forties of the last century,' which were was made. to that effect; and he adds that these referAMBROSE HEAL. ences were accompanied by a none too flattering portrait. ог Since MR. NEWTON'S letter appeared, another portrait of Francis Hobler has come into my hands, the original of which I take to be identical with that of the portrait he refers to. Below the engraving is some letterpress giving a short biography in which this Beaconsfield. un WOLFE'S FUNERAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE': FRENCH VERSION WANTED (cliii. 404).-"Ni le son du tambour," etc. The French version of the above, by the Rev. Francis Mahony, will be found in The Reliques of Father Prout,' edition of The French version was written by F. S. Mahony (Father Prout) and first appeared in Bentley's Miscellany for January, 1837. It is reproduced in The Works of Father Prout (The Rev. Francis Mahony), London, 1881, p. 475. It is a repetition of the hoax first perpetrated on Thomas Moore* in Fraser's Magazine in 1834. In a preliminary statement, he claimed that Wolfe took his poem from a French original, written to commemorate the funeral of a certain Colonel de Beaumanoir, who commanded a Breton regiment, under Lally Tollendal, and was killed shortly before his surrender of Pondicherry to Coote in 1749. He further states that this poem is to be found in an appendix to the Memoirs of Lally Tollendal,' edited by his son. is also wrong. These 'Memoirs were published in 1790, and, as far as I know, never reprinted. The edition by his son is given merely to account for the French origin of the poem. His date Pondicherry surrendered on Jan. 15, 1761. He seems to have confused this siege with the abortive one under Admiral Boscawen in August, 1748. The poem is headed The Original of "Not a drum was heard." The authenticity of the poem was discussed in N. & Q.' 9 S. xi. 105, 143, 214, after a paragraph had appeared in Truth for Jan. 29, 1903, in which the second verse was quoted, and the French origin attributed by a correspondent. Wolfe's claim to the authorship is there clearly proved. The whole poem, with Mahoney's statement, was also printed in the Standard, contributed by a correspondent who had found it among the papers of a deceased relation. He also appeared to believe that Wolfe had translated it from the French. My extract is unfortunately not dated, but it appears to be later than 1903. The legend seems to be hard to kill. I scotched it again three days ago only by producing Father Prout's Works. C. W. FIREBRACE, CHURCH INSCRIPTIONS AND THE A village museum as a practical idea must, in the great majority of cases, be out of the question. A suitable building, some income, locked show cases, a caretaker, would all be required and in the end the collection would usually be ill cared for, or suffer the fate of the parochial libraries of older generations. R. S. B. APPOINTMENT OF INTRUDED MINISTERS (cliii. 406).-Broadly speaking, these were appointed by the Parliamentary Committee for the Relief of Plundered Ministers, and the Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers, but county committees were in many cases authorised to nominate and appoint, with the advice of local clergy called * The Rogueries of Tom Moore,' op. cit. in to assist. The whole subject is dealt with in the introduction to the Minutes of these p. 83. bodies edited, so far as related to the Counties the corner of Old Bond Street and Burlington of Lancaster and Chester, by W. A. Shaw, Gardens. Flanked by those of the Royal in vols. xxviii. and xxxiv. of the Record R. S. B. Family, each some three feet square, they form I am informed by the courteous of THE Porabilia EMBUN (Cl. 319, onie peoples symbol of sleep, as mentioned also in your article; for the Czech people symbol of barrenness. A bride to whom before her wed-"" ding poppy is strewed into her shoes will in her marriage have no children. I have never heard in Czechoslovakia that the poppy symbolizes Communism. Olomouc, Czechoslovakia. OTTO F. BABLER. RE EVELL OF WALTHAMSTOW (cliii. 405). Although not a definite reply to this query, the following may possibly afford a clue. Henry Revell, of Round Oak, Englefield Green, married Louisa Read. Two of their sons were in the Bengal Army, and two of their daughters married into the same Service. Of the former, the elder, Joseph Leverton Revell, was bapt. at St. Olave's, Jewry, 20 Mar., 1802. He died Langford Place, London, N. W., 13 Dec., 1881. "Late 2nd Bengai Fusiliers (104th Regt.), and of Round Oak, Englefield Green " (The Times, 15 Dec., 1881). TO GET RORKE'S DRIFT” (cliii. 404). -An excellent authority and able writer on South Africa, who has lived not so far from Rorke's Drift, informs me that he has never heard the expression. Nor apparently can it be used very appropriately in the sense mentioned by COL. RADICE, because, though the defence of the Drift may have been a brilliant feat of war, there was nothing final or decisive about it. Much more serious for the Zulus was the check they received at Kambula, and the final catastrophe took place at Ulundi, after Lord Chelmsford had been heavily reinforced. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG. I have not heard this expression, but would suggest that it is a bit of " rhyming slang used as the equivalent of short shrift." Rhymes (so-called) used for rhyming slang are often very imperfect, and rather assonances than rhymes. The family had been connected with E.I. Co. in India and China since the middle of LE the eighteenth century. V. H. BANKING ITEMS (cliii. 370).—IS MR. W. H. MANCHEE quite correct in saying that far adopted any crest or coat. . . although it "the Westminster Bank has not could have done so.' CHARLES STRACHEY. ETTERS OF PROTECTION, 1294 (cliii. 406). These letters were issued to protect the holder against the sheriff. A good many instances in Devon and other counties may be seen in the Calendar of Supplement(included in the ary Close Rolls for 1297 So volume called Calendar of Chancery Rolls, various') and in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1292-1301. The letters were issued to Since the amalgamation and absorption of various other banks during the past few years, nisances, after having been charged with clergy, who were willing to enter into recogand as soon as the Westminster Bank took refusing to aid in the defence of the realm this title, an heraldic device, consisting of and church of England, see preface to portcullis, surrounded by eight Tudor roses, has adorned its cheques, being placed in the In a later case the protection included. the Calendar Chancery Rolls, various,' at p. vi. middle of the left side, close to the counter-clause quod quietus sit de omnibus placitis, part, and appears also on the Bank's new 'Cal. Pat. Rolls,' 1318, p. 245. Later still premises on both its Piccadilly and Albemarle Street frontages. This design is not the the protection became equivalent to a passCity Arms, if, by this term MR. MAN- Port, as in the case of Hugh de Courtenaye, CHEE means the arms of the City of West-Earl of Devon, Aug. 25, 1343, who received protection and safe conduct until Whitsunday when going on a pilgrimage beyond the seas minster. There is, however, a splendid sculptured representation in gold and colours, together with crest and motto of the complete arms of the City of Westminster, on the front of Messrs. Atkinsons' beautiful new building at Cal. Pat. Rolls,' 1343-5, p. 113. For records of protections, reference may be made to Hist. MSS. Comm. Lord Salisbury's MSS., part xiii. p. 490. M. THE THREBLE THRIBERS OR NORNS: FATAL GREEN (cliii. 399).-As to the unlucky quality of green, it may be of some interest to remark that Scott in The Lady of the Lake' writes of "The fairies' fatal green," and that the Irish statesman Parnell BISHOP OF LOHENGRIN (cliii. 371, had a curious aversion from that colour. I used to be told: Les yeux bleus Vont aux cieux: Vont au purgatoire : Les yeux verts Vont aux enfers. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. 410). May I clear up this matter? The Times, quoted by ME. DE TERNANT, Contained a printer's error. Instead of saying "that among those present was the Swedish Lutheran Bishop of Lohengrin," the notice should have read "the Swedish Lutheran Bishop Lönegren." The Bishop Lönegren of Härnösand, Sweden, took part in the dedicaSt. Luke's HALK FAMILY (cliii. 405).-According tion of the War Memorial at to T. F. Kirby's Winchester Scholars,' Church In PROF. BENSLY's reply, at the a mistake. at p. 47, one Thomas Chalk, or Ywen, entered latter reference there appears Winchester College from Chalk in 1423, was The seat of the Archbishop of Sweden is not Scholar of New College, and then Fellow Lund but Uppsala. He is, however, right in 1430, took the degree of LL.B., and in his supposition that there has been a con1453 became Rector of St. Leonards, Hast- fusion with the Bishop's family name mentioned in The Times notice. ings, and of Tingewick. CH On p. 195, Kirby records that HusseyElwes-Hinton (Husselhin) Chock, son of Sir Francis Chock, entered Winchester College in 1667, aged 13, from Avington, Berks, and was Fellow of New College from 1672, to 1675, when he died. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. Stockholm, Sweden. LOUIS ZETTERSTEN. BEVIL FAMILY OF CHESTERTON, CO. to the author of the letterpress, birthplace Chester " One of these purports to be the " of Dryden," which is described as ton situated on the western side of the Great North road, near Kate's Cavin, about four miles north of Stilton . . . burnt down a few years after the present drawing was made." I Dryden, of course, was born at Aldwincle, co. Northants, and not at Chesterton. ' Lives of the think Dr. Johnson, in his Poets,' makes Dryden a native of co. Hunts. Actually, he only visited Chesterton, which had descended from Sir Robert Bevil to the poet's cousin, John Dryden. The engraving shows a long, two-storied mansion in a park, and in close proximity to a church with a broach spire. Aldwincle church has a tower, so the probability is that, although not representing Dryden's birthplace, it does represent Chesterton. From the letterpress of the volume it appears that at the date of publication Byron was still living. It was subsequent to 1807, for reference is made to the destruction of the grotto in the grounds of Pope's villa in that year. |