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io» s. iv. SKPT. so. 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 265 ruption have been accustomed to expose the bodies of their dead, to Robert Xavier Mur- phy, a talented young Irishman, editor of The Bairdtay Times and Oriental translator to the Indian Government, who died 26 Feb- ruary, 1857, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. Murphy was a contributor to The Dublin University Magazine from 1847 to 1850, and probably later. Sir George Bird wood suggests that it was in an article in this magazine that the phrase " towers of silence " was first employed, but avows his inability to under- take the task of tracing where and when it was first used, and desires that younger hands may perform this labour of love. JOHN HEBB. NUTTING: "THE DEVIL'S NUTBAG."—The nuts are ripe, and nutting parties have found pleasure in a day's nutting in the woods in many a Midland district. Each lad and lass carried a nutting bag, and a hooked stick with which to pull within hand-reach the hazel branches loaded with tempting nuts projecting from the beards in •which they grow. When the nut-noses begin to brown, and the green beards shrivel and turn grey at the tips, then are they ripe, and then nutting may begin. Sticks and nut- bags were often household belongings, handed down from one set of young folks to another, and the crooked stick was as much prized as the nutbag. Why in such an entertainment a nutting bag should be connected in any way with the devil does not appear ; but it was common enough, on looking into the bag to find how its filling was going on, to remark that it was " as black as the devil's nutbag." In gathering nuts some are found fair without, and dead within. These are, or at any rate were, called "def " nuts or "det" nuts, and the "def were said to have been touched by the devil, much as a little later on will be said of blackberries, when frost has nipped them, that the "devil has cast his hoof over them." THOS. RATCLJFFE. Worksop. WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation nn family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct. SYLVAIN MABECHAL.—This man wrote that strange book the ' Dictionnaire des Athees.' He began as a somewhat successful poet at twenty-one, and was remarkable for the harmony of his versification and the light- ness, grace, and gaiety of his manner. His literary success introduced him to the sub~ librarianship at the College Mazarin. He immediately took up with erudition deep and varied, which had a most singular effect upon him. The deeper he went the more he lost of grace and simplicity, he became hard and dialectic, and in his clouded imagination sought celebrity as a sage. So at last, says his biographer, he quitted reason altogether. Perhaps we might say rather, that he found Rousseau and Voltaire. He was twenty-eight when Rousseau died, and he managed to embitter completely his life by his writings, especially by his 'Pseaumes Nouvellement Decou verts,' published as by S. Ar. Larnech, the anagram of his name. What I want to know of him is this. J. B. L. Germond, who republished the dictionary,, writes thus: " Nous avons done retabli tous les noms, sauf deux, dont notre gratitude- nous a fait un devoir de ne point trahir le secret." Can anybody point out which these two are 1 The secret of who they were would be of some interest also ; and it is possible that in the lapse of time, now more than a century, the secret may have transpired of itself. C. A. WARD. Walthamstow. DUCHESS OF CANNIZAEO.—In a diary of the year 1831 I find occasional mention of a " Duchess of Cannizaro." I shall be greatly obliged to any of your readers who will tell me who this lady was. She gave parties at Cannizaro, Wimbledon, and I believe her to have been English by birth. E. M. FAERANT'S ANTHEM " LORD, FOR THY TEN- DER MEECY'S SAKE."—I have a note that the- words of this beautiful anthem are from Lydley's ' Prayers,' but I cannot find who Lydley was, or the date of his ' Prayers.' He- is not mentioned in the'D.N.B.,'or in any other biographical work to which I have- access. Can any of your contributors en- lighten mo? Farrant was Master of the Choristers of St. George's Chapel, Windsor,, and died in 1580. J. A. HEWITT. The Rectory, Cradock, S. Africa. CHAUNCY COBEESPONDENCE, &c. — I an* anxious to meet with any letters in the hand- writing of Sir Henry Chauncy, the Hertford- shire Historian. He must have had an ex- tensive correspondence with persons in the county relating to his work between 1680 and1 1700, but the only manuscript I have, up to> the present, discovered is the original draft of the preface to his ' History of Hertford- shire,' in the possession of a descendant. I am loth to believe that all else has perished,