Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/121

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n s. iv. AU. 5, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


115


after the end of March hundreds of acres of beauti- ful heather are burnt, and great destruction of black game and hares, and other game-birds and animals, and of small-bird life takes place."

Evidence having been given as to the defendant lighting fires at many places on the day named, the report continues :

" Mr. George Glanfield, of Belstone, assistant- overseer, deposed to the defendant not being rated as an owner in the parish of Belstone. Defendant said he claimed as a right such as he had been accustomed to for many years, as a Belstone parishioner, to cut ' vaggs ' and turf on the Moor, and it was necessary first to burn the heather before the ' yaggs ' could be cut. In cross-examination, he admitted he had not cut any ' vaggs ' at any of the places where he had lit the fires.

" Mr. Prickman submitted there had been wanton and malicious burning on the part of the defendant, he having lit fires in many places, according to the evidence, not at all suitable for the cutting of ' vaggs ' or turf, which showed the wantonness of the act. The Bench fined defendant 19s. inclusive."

T. T. V.

[MR. OSWALD J. BEICHEL also thanked for reply.]

SENIOR WRANGLERS : SENIOR CLASSICS <11 S. iv. 69). With regard to Senior Wranglers, MR. F. C. WHITE will find the information he seeks in 'The Senior Wranglers of the University of Cambridge from 1748 to 1907, with Biographical, &c., Notes,' by C. M. Neale, published by F. T. Groom & Son, Bury St. Edmunds, 1907.

In 1908 a Trinity and a Pembroke man were bracketed Seniors ; and in 1909 (the last year) the Senior Wrangler was from Trinity. MR. WHITE'S numbers from each college are not, I think, quite correct : they should be Trinity 56, St. John's 55, Cams 14, ' Pembroke 7, and the rest as stated by him. A. R. M.

RAIKES CENTENARY (11 S. iii. 366 ; iv. 37). I am indebted to MR. R. W. MARSTON of High Barnet for drawing my attention privately to the fact that the father of Raikes married no fewer than three times, and that the extract I quoted from our registers refers to the second of his marriages, not to the third, of which the Sunday-school pioneer was fruit. As MR. MARSTON re- marks, the mother of the celebrated Robert was Mary Drew of Nailsworth, Gloucs., not Ann Monk of St. Michael Bassishaw.

With regard to the Christian name of the clergyman who officiated at the wedding which took place here in 1725, I may say that it was the Rev. William Butler who was rector here during the period to which MR. C. E. BUTLER alludes, ante, p. 37.


He was also Vicar of Dagenham, and some- time chaplain to the Marquis of Annandale and the Earl of Burlington. See the account of his life in the ' History of Dagenham ' of the Rev. J. P. Shawcross, published 1904. Mr. Shawcross makes no mention of a fact which is well known to me, and is responsible for MR. C. E. BUTLER'S query, viz., that several printed authorities confuse the name or the identity (or both) of the Rev. William Butler, our rector, with those of his father, the Rev. Lilly Butler, who was for some years minister of the near-by hurch of St. Mary the Virgin, Alderman- bury. WILLIAM McMuRRAY. St. Anne and St. Agnes, Gresham Street, E.C.

EMERSON AND HEINE IN ENGLAND (1 1 S. iv. [)). I am not able to answer MR. BRES- LAR'S query as to the position of Emerson's house in Russell Square, on his first visit to England in 1833. If, however, MR. BRESLAR, will turn to The Westminster Gazette of 16 July and 7 August, 1906, he will find two letters of mine upon Emerson's last visit to England in 1873, when he wrote (simply dating his letter from Oxford) to his cousin (my sister-in-law) a letter of which I gave a copy in 1906, but it is too long to quote in ' N. & Q.' He stayed in Oxford two days only, and left for Stratford-on- Avon, going thence to York, Durham, and Edinburgh.

I appended mention of Ralph, the father of L. Juliet Mercer, and first cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Emersons descended from Joseph Emerson, a minister who emigrated from England. He was born in 1620 or 1621, and died in Concord, U.S.A., in 1680.

I spent an evening with R. W. Emerson in an hotel at Santa Lucia in 1873, when he was on his way to Egypt with an invalid daughter, and alluded to this meeting in The Academy of 15 April, 1905, in a letter I wrote on Walter Savage Landor. I believe R. W. Emerson was then travelling strictly- incognito, and only saw Duncan (the Ameri- can Consul) and myself in Naples.

WILLIAM MERCER.

Heine's visit to England was made in 1827. See ' Life of Heinrich Heine,' by William Sharp, pp. 105-8. W. B.

SPIDER STORIES (US. iv. 26, 76). The accounts given by old authors as to the size of some spiders are not exaggerated.

I remember, when a boy, seeing a species in Camoens's Gardens in Macao, China, which I have always since described as