1759, giving a "List of Ships with Sir Edw. Hawke," at the head of which is the "Royal George, 100 guns, 880 men, Admiral Hawke." It further gives an Extract of a Letter from a Chaplain of one of his Majesty's Ships, dated from Quiberon Bay, Nov. 25, 1759," which contains this statement :

"On the 14th of November Sir Edward Hawke hoisted his flag on board the Royal George in Torbay, where the fleet had put in a few days before through stress of weather."

a board plastered over which with cotton they wipe out when it is full as we do from slates or table books."

Asylum at Egmore, near Madras, of which he was superintendent. Lancaster saw a description of it in Bell's Experiment in Education' (1798) and adopted it in his Borough Road School about 1803. It spread thence into all schools on his system and after the establishment of the National Society in 1811, with Dr. Bell as superintendent, it was employed in all National Schools. DAVID SALMON.

Swansea.

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At the last reference MR. J. HARVEY have come into use until the period of modern BLOOM says that slate pencils can hardly lead pencils, viz., early in the nineteenth century. But "modern lead pencils," that is, pencils cased in wood, are much older than that. The O.E.D.' quotes, under date 1683: Black Lead....of late....is curiously formed into cases of Deal or Cedar, and so sold as dry Pencils.' The date of the first use of slate pencils is probably as old and I do not see why it should not be older. In Dyche's New General English Dictionary (1744), "pencil " is various defined, but of slate to write with on a broad flat slate. one definition is: "A small, long, thin piece known in schools before Lancaster's time. It does not seem likely that this use was not I attended in the sixties, I suppose because We were not allowed to use slates in a school they led to slovenly ways of working.

C. C. B.

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a grey fossile stone easily broken into thin plates which are used to cover houses or to write upon." Horace Walpole, in a letter dated Nov. 15, 1781, explains the illegibility of his writing by the gout in his hand, and adds :

"Soon, mayhap, I must write upon a slate! it will only be scraping my fingers to a point and they will serve for a chalk pencil."

As late as 1821 Charles Lamb (in 'Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist ') mentions "chalk and a slate."

Slates had been used by Pestalozzi at Burgdorf towards the close of the eighteenth century, but Lancaster certainly knew nothing of him in 1803; even a zealous reformer like Wilderspin almost boasted that he had not heard of him in 1820.

It is interesting to learn from MR. BLOOM'S letter that sand has been used within living memory. Dr. Andrew Bell saw it used by the natives on the Malabar Coast and intro

of the Mildmay family, the "Mr. Mildmay referred to. No information can be got at the Admiralty Library and the Ships Muster Books at the Public Record Office do not go further back than 1745. Could MR. ANSTEY say where the log of the Tavistock could be seen, or whether that or Marine Records give further information? H. A. ST J. M.

There is no trace about these labels of illiteracy, as there might well be if they were carelessly hand-painted in rough lettering. On the contrary, they all appear to be

glaze. To my mind, it is more probable that " Cypress was the name of another apple or pear, used for a different class of cider or perry.

MR BRADBURY suggests that these labels were intended to be hung round the necks of wine bottles or decanters. That, however, is impossible; they are of thick earthenware, are 5 ins. in length, and were obviously intended to hang above a wine bin, and indeed in some cases have a hole intended for the supporting nail. I should say they were supplied by the wine merchant from whom the cider or other drink was bought; and this is another reason why it is unlikely that Cypress stands for "Cyprus.'

E. T. BALDWIN.

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the

ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN' (12 S. vi. 90, 136). 10. The reference to Palemon is a bad slip. It is to that "pride of swains Palemon of Thomson's 'Seasons' (see Autumn '), who plays the part of Boaz to Lavinia's Ruth. He was not old," for he is spoken of as "the Youth," and there is no such line as Scott inserts in the poem. Obviously King René cannot have him in mind, and it is to be supposed that Scott in his reference mentally confused him with C. C. B.

Boaz.

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PETROGRAD: MONUMENT OF PETER THE GREAT (12 S. vi. 130). Reading the quotation by WESSEX of the weight of the granite block upon which the equestrian statue of Peter the Great was placed in Petrograd, one is tempted to fear that the equivalent of a ton has gone the way of the rouble and decreased almost to extinction. The weight of the stone never was over 15,000 tons," but has been estimated at about 1,500 tons. The measurements originally were 45 ft. long, 30 ft. high, 25 ft. wide. In shaping the mass it broke, the measurements are now 43 ft. long, 14 ft. high, and 20 ft. wide. This erratic block of granite originally lay at Lakhta, a village near to the mouth of the

the Neva, and on the north shore of the Gulf of Finland. The alluvial deposit on the site of St. Petersburg is 600 ft. deep. In the Academy of Arts, among a collection of drawings and engravings of the time of Catharine II., who erected the monument to Peter the Great in 1782, I remember seeing an illustration of how the stone was transported. Windlasses and ropes laboriously dragged the great weight over cannon balls rolling on an iron trainway; a drummer in the picturesque uniform of the Pavlovsky Regiment is depicted on the top of the block, beating time to unite the efforts of the five hundred men, who took five weeks to bring it to the south shore of the main stream of the Neva, where, opposite the north side of the cathedral of St. Isaac, but much nearer the river bank, the monument is erected. Whatever route was taken a considerable expanse of water must have been crossed which in those days could only have been accomplished in the depth of winter.

The reason why so much trouble was taken to procure this particular piece of granite was because the Great Tsar was accustomed to stand on it when at Lakhta, and watched on one occasion the defeat of a Swedish fleet. It was at Lakhta, in 1724, at personal risk, he saved some fishermen from drowning, which episode is portrayed in another monument, erected on the Admiralty Quay foundation of St. Petersburg. It was on tho on the occasion of the bi-centenary of the occasion of this rescue that Peter contracted in the following January. the illness which was the cause of his death

Another fine piece of red granite and a wonderful monument is that erected in 1832 to Alexander I. The monolith itself is 84 ft. high and 14 ft. in diameter and weighs nearly 400 tons. The monument which stands in the centre of the great square opposite the Winter Palace, has a total height of 154 ft. 9 in., and rests on a mass of wooden piles driven into the alluvial sand. HUGH R. WATKIN.

Chelston Hall, Torquay.

The immense stone that was made to serve as a pedestal for the equestrian statue of Peter the Great was a well-known object at Lachta, a village on the Gulf of Cronstadt. More than once had the great Peter climbed it, when he wished to get a view of his surroundings, and this was the reason perhaps why Catherine II. determined to

deep in the earth, and was thickly carpeted with moss; a road had to be cut through the forest to convey it to the coast. The block was moved by means of copper wheels that ran upon a line of the same metal; a hundred peasants were employed to work the cranes (Winden) and the Empress appeared in person in February, 1770, to encourage them in their Titanic undertaking. So interested was she in their efforts that she had a medal struck representing the operation and bearing the inscription: Bordering upon folly.' In the course of its journey the stone settled down comfortably five times in the lap of mother earth, but in the autumn it had reached the coast, where it was elevated on to a specially constructed jetty (Damm) and put upon a vessel that carried it close to the spot where it was destined to remain.

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There are (or were) two pictures at the Hermitage representing the stone's journey and its arrival at its destination. I am indebted for the above facts to an account by Zabel (Leipsic, 1901) of the art treasures of the Russian capital. No reference is made there to the 80,000 horses mentioned by your correspondent.

T. PERCY ARMSTRONG.

The Authors' Club, S.W.1.

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YALE AND HOBBS (12 S. vi. 130).-A full account of the lock controversy will be found in Price's A Treatise on Fire and Thief-proof Depositories and Locks and Keys ' (1856). On p. 750 an extract is given

from The Banker's Circular for June 22, 1856, which extract quotes The Ilion Independent to the effect that the Day & Newell lock, manufactured at New York, commonly known as the "Hobbs lock," has at last been picked by Lynus Yale, jun., of the adjoining village of Newport. The report further gives the modus operandi of picking the lock. ARCHIBALD SPARKE.

WALTER HAMILTON, F.R.G.S. (12 S. v. 318; vi. 117).-I missed the query at the first reference, and cannot just now refer to it. My regretted friend Walter Hamilton was not only the editor of Pro and Con but its principal writer and probably proprietor. His papers on the history of the English Poets Laureate began in No. 2 (Jan. 15, 1873) and continued throughout the volume. I do not know if W. B. H.'s note of Dec. 20, 1913, concerning Pro and Con has ever been answered, and so I reply to it now as far as I can. A new, enlarged, and greatly improved series of Pro and Con was started in

No. 1, and I do not know if it was continued. It is interesting to note a review in this number of Morris's Earthly Paradise,' in which the writer, doubtless Walter Hamilton (although with the first number of the second volume the name of the editor ceases to be given), says of the poetry of Morris that although now but little known, [it] will eventually rank with that of our firsti narrative poets." W. ROBERTS.

BELT-BUCKLE PLATE AND MOTTO (12 S. vi. 131).-The motto Auspicio Regis et Senatus Angliæ was that of the East India Company. The Company had an Ordnance Department in each of its three establishments at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The Departments were intimately connected with that of the Royal Artillery in their early days, between 1769, when they were originated, and 1821, when they were reorganized. They used the same shield of arms as a seal and departmental symbol, namely, three field guns, two and one, with the motto Sua tela tonanti." This shield of arms is over the gate of the Department at Woolwich, and also over the old gate of the Department at Fort St. George on the Coromandel Coast. The motto of the East India Company on the buckle-plate seems to

show that the owner and wearer of the buckle was connected with one of the Ordnance Departments of the Honourable Company.

FRANK PENNY.

FINKLE STREET (12 S. v. 69, 109, 279; vi. 25, 114).-The quotation from Prof. Skeat given by DR. WHITEHEAD in no. 104 I would ask if he is a very interesting one. knows that in the ancient village of Calbourne in the Isle of Wight a Winkle Street still exists ?

some

This fact is specially interesting, as Calbourne meets the suggestion that streets thus named are found in places where the Danes are known to have made settlement. Winkle Street at Calbourne fulfils the conditions of being "crooked and "like an elbow "; and-consisting of but a few old cottages it runs, after a sharp turn, by the side of the Bourne, which at its opening was entered by the Danes. The fine old seat of Swainston is in Calbourne Parish, and its name is said to have meant "Settlement of the Stranger.

The Saxon Chronicle tells us that, in the reign of Ethelred, the Danes, after plundering the mainland, sailed with their booty to

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