394
NOTES AND QUERIES. ,[io s. vm. NOV. i6, 1907.
& Co. in 1898, " the first British reprint of
the poem as it stood in The Germ." Two of
the lines in Stanza I. apparently appeared
in yet another form (in The Oxford and
Cambridge Magazine), as :
Her eyes knew more of rest and shade Than waters stilled at even. And in Stanza IX. two of the lines ran :
And still she bowed above the vast Waste sea of worlds that swam.
But all these, and other variants, will be found in the introduction above referred to.
A. R. WALLER. Cambridge.
In the last of the lines quoted from Text II. (p. 352), " the bended arm " should be " her bended arm." W. B.
"CAMELIAN" (10 S. viii. 306). ST. SWITHIN seems to have overlooked Webster's dictionary. My edition (dated 1854, and published by Nathaniel Cooke) has this entry : " Ca-me'le-on Min'er-al, n. [See Chameleon.] A compound of pure potash and black oxyd of manganese."
Under ' Chameleon ' I find no mention of the mineral ; but, as I read that the animal " is distinguished for its sudden and great changes in color," I suppose that Webster means to imply by the words " see Chame- leon " that the mineral was so called because of some real or supposed inconstancy of colour.
Since writing the above, I have found a chemico-historical account of the name and nature of " Mineral Chameleon " (with references to important authorities) on pp. 915-16 of vol. ii. of Roscoe and Schorlem- mer's ' Treatise on Chemistry ' (Macmillan, 1897). R. JOHNSON WALKER.
Little Holland House, Kensington, W.
I think this a ghost-word, the result of hasty chirography, or of misreading on the part of the compositor. In all probability the author wrote " carnelian," but the r and n were so run together that they looked like m. Any one who will take the trouble to write the word can see how the mis- reading occurred. JOHN E. NORCROSS. Brooklyn, U.S.
THE RACIAL PROBLEM OF EUROPE (10 S- viii. 145, 218, 233, 274). A correspondent of L' Intermediate, 20 Avril, 1907, observes, when writing of Spanish blood in Flanders, that it is an error to attribute the paternity of the Flemings with dark skin and black hair to the Spaniards. There are documents which prove the existence of " noirs " in Flanders in the Middle Ages. In the life
of St. Godlieve (eleventh century) written
by one of her contemporaries Drogon,
monk of the abbey of Saint-Andre-lez-
Bruges the biographer shows us a Flemish
seigneur, Bertulf de Ghistelles, going to
marry Godelieve in Boulonnais,and bringing
her home to his memoir. When the mother
of the chdtelain sees this woman with her
black hair and eyes arrive, her Germanic
soul revolts, and she says harshly to her son :
" Ne pouvais-tu trouver des corneilles dans
tes terres si tu voulais t'en amuser, au lieu
d'aller prendre celle-ci pour femme a
Fetranger ! " The dark Flemings are in
reality descendants of the race melano-
chroique which preceded the Celtic and
German invaders in the country.
The authors of the Border ballads seem to have considered the blue-eyed, yellow- haired man or maid more attractive than a darker type. Infmany English counties there is still the same feeling among the poor, though red hair is disliked. Does this conception of beauty arise from the fact that the latest invaders of Western Europe were, till they began to mate with the peoples who had come in before them, decidedly blonde in type ? G. E.
See an excellent summary of the evidence and theories on this question as far as Britain is concerned in Mackinder's ' Britain and the British Seas,' chap, xii., 'Ethno- graphical Geography.' ALEX. RUSSELL.
Stronmess.
LAWS OF GRAVITY AND THE ANCIENT GREEKS (10 S. viii. 210). There were ancient Greeks who knew (or believed) that all heavy bodies sought the centre of the earth. But Plutarch in one of his sym- posiums puts into the mouth of a daring speculator an imaginary description of what would happen to a man if he were dropped into a hole bored right through the centre of the earth and down to the surface at the Antipodes. This man is made to show a clearer perception of the action of a central attractive force than is common even now ; the remarks of his comrades are, to a modern mind, extremely feeble. I have not a copy of Plutarch at hand ; but I think the passage occurs in the ' De Placitis Philosophorum.'
W. M. M.
WILLIAM HOGSFLESH, CRICKETER (10 S. viii. 28, 334). I find that the surname Hogsflesh occurs not infrequently in different parts of Sussex. There was a family of that name living near the Priory ruins in the parish of Southover, near Lewes, a few years
