266
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. 11. OCT. i, iw*.
-dragons du marechal de Villars, et qu'une circon-
stance fortuite 1'empecha seule de donner suite a
ce dessein. Comment le timide Newton se fut-il
-conduit sur le champ de bataille, lui qui, de crainte
de tomber, ne se promenait en voiture dans les rues
de Londres que les bras e"tendus et les mains cram-
ponnees aux deux portieres. On concevra d'apres
ce seul fait que la question puisse etre soulevee et
devenir le sujet d'un doute."
Surely we may indeed doubt, or rather absolutely reject, not only u ce seul fait," but the whole of the above story. Yet it is copied into the 4 Nouvelle Biographie Gene- rale ' with the omission of the last sentence .and the " doute." Let us look at the dates. The first rising of the Camisards broke out in the Cevennes in the year 1689, four years after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but it did not assume wide dimensions until 1702, nor was it till 1704 that Villars (super- seding Montrevel) took charge of the troops sent to suppress it. At that time Newton was in the sixty-second year of his age. Where Brougham (who was born more than fifty years after the death of Newton) got the absurd story from it would be hard to say. Possibly there may have been a tradition that Newton had been heard in conversation to express sympathy with the persecuted Huguenots. It was, I suppose, inevitable that Arago should speak of Newton's half- niece, Miss Catherine Barton, as "veuve du colonel Barton" (she was really his sister). But the remarks about his timidity and the reflection about his supposed scheme of taking part in warfare should have been omitted. Nor is it at all likely that his knighthood by Anne in 1705 had, as Arago suggests, anything to do with his defeat as one of the candidates for a seat in Parliament that year. The biography from which I have already quoted says erroneously that in that year " il reQut de la reine Anne le. titre de baronnet." W. T. LYNN.
Blackheath.
NEW STYLE, 1582. In his 'Book of Al- manacs ' De Morgan refers us to Almanac 28 (Easter, 18 April) for the year subsequent to the omitted days (5-14 October). This is an error, and it involves a breach of the Sunday sequence. The almanac to use is No. 35 (Easter, 25 April). Under O.S. 30 September was the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity. The Bull of Gregory XIII. orders 17 October to be treated as the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (seven- teenth after Trinity). C. S. WARD.
" REDUCE." Under this word in the ' Ox- English Dictionary ' the earliest quota- tion given in illustration of the sense "to
degrade a non-commissioned officer " is from
James's 'Military Dictionary,' 1802; and
under the word ' Reduction ' the date of the
earliest quotation applying to the same sense
is 1806. But the records of courts-martial in
Tangiers, 1664-6, supply several instances of
non-commissioned officers having been sen-
tenced to be " reduced to a private centinel,"
"reduced to private soldiers," &c.; and about
a hundred years later, in 1768, Cuthbertson,
writing of unworthy sergeants and corporals,
says :
"No time is to be lost in reducing such improper persons, and appointing those in their room who will acquit themselves with diligence and spirit." ' System of a Battalion,' p. 10.
W. S.
OAKS : THEIR AGE. The following ap- peared in the Shrewsbury Chronicle of 9 Sep- tember :
"There has just been sawn up in a Shrewsbury timber yard a gigantic oak felled on the Walcot estate of the Earl of Powis. The trunk at the base was seven feet in diameter, it weighed some ten tons, and the rings, it is said, prove that the tree was more than a thousand years old."
I am not a judge of age, but I should think 500 years is more likely. It has been cut up for coffin-lids. The beauty of the surface compelled me to purchase two lengths, so that I may have a piece of household furni- ture made. HERBERT SOUTHAM. Shrewsbury.
"FRESHMAN" WOMEN. The offices of chairman and alderman have frequently been filled and creditably by ladies, with the usual waggery with regard to their titles. The term "freshman" seems to be employed in America to designate lady students lately arrived. In an article on co-education in Harpers Weekly (20 August), Dr. E. Van de Warker writes :
"The freshman young women attempt to break up a sophomore supper by capturing the president and hazing her about town in a public hack until late at night. Female sophomores scale dangerous fire-escapes to remove a freshman flag."
Apparently the American lady students have adopted the names and pranks of their brother collegians.
FRANCIS P. MARCH ANT.
"STRICKEN FIELD." Some time ago there was some discussion in print (not, I think, in * N. & Q.') as to the meaning of the ex- pression "a stricken field," used by Lord Salisbury at the Guildhall on 9 November, 1898, with reference to Lord Kitchener's victory at Omdurman. I never saw any definite explanation given, but some light may be thrown on the phrase by a sentence
