152
NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. x. AUG. 22, wu.
ST. KATHERINE'S-BY-THE-TOWER (11 S.
x. 70). These Registers are now in the custody of the Master of St. Katherine's Collegiate Church, Regent's Park. Mem- bers of the public desiring to search them should make appointments to do so between the hours of 10 and 4, and are liable to be charged the statutory fees. According to the Parliamentary Return of 1831, these Regis- ters comprise the following volumes :
Vols. i.-iv. Bap. 1584-1618, 1620-1696; Bur. 1584-1678 ; Marr. 1584-1695, interrupted by vols. v., vi. Bap. 1684-1690, 1684-1727 ; Bur. 1684-1693, 1684-1711, 1713-1727, also by vols. vii., viii. Marr. 1686-1700, 1695-1734. Vol. ix. Bap. Bur. 1704-1713. Vol. x. Bap. 1728-1769 ; Bur. 1677-1695, 1727-1794. Vol. xi. Marr. 1735-1753. Vol. xii. Bap. 1770-1812 ; Bur. 1795-1812. Vols. xiii., xiv. Marr. 1754- 1812.
THOS. M. BLAGG, F.S.A.
THE ACTION or VINEGAR ON ROCKS ( 1 1 S. x. 11, 96). To those of your readers who are interested in this subject I would recommend the perusal of an article entitled ' Felssprengen mittelst Feuer und Essig bei den Alten ' in the Zeitschrift jur das gesamte Schiess- und Sprengstoffwesen for 1 Aug., 1909, and also of the article on ' Essig ' in Pauly's ' Real Encyclopaedic,' vol. vi. part ii. (1907). It must be borne in mind that according to Livy the rocks were heated before vinegar was poured on them to render them soft and crumbling, and thus it was merely a case of " fire-setting " as practised formerly in Spain, Norway, Hungary, and Germany. In the last country, in the Rammelsberg mines near Goslar, the prac- tice survived till 1870, when it had to be discontinued owing to the high price of firewood. The process was fully described and illustrated by George Agricola in his book 'De R Metallica' (first edition, 1556), a translation of which by Herbert C. Hoover and Lou H. Hoover appeared with copious notes in London in 1912. According to the translators, seventeenth-century writers in England continue to describe the process ; and the rate of advance achieved with it in the Koenigsberg mines was from 5 ft. to 20 ft. per month. According to Livy's account, Hannibal spent only four days about the particular rock which had to be cleared away by fire, vinegar, and iron instruments ; and the bulk of the work of rock-cutting must, therefore, have been comparatively small.
The famous French chemist M. Berthelot has dealt with the subject in the Journal des Savants for April, 1889 ; and Mr. Douglas W.
Freshfield, in his recently published book
' Hannibal Once More,' has called attention
to a diploma granted by the Emperor
Frederick III. to the Marquess Louis of
Saluzzo, in which vinegar is mentioned as
one of the means to be employed in making
the Traversette Tunnel :
" Ad perforandum ferro igne aceto ac variis aliis ingeniis saxeum atque altissimum montem ilium qui pre-eminet altitudine ceteras Ytalie colics vulgariter Vesalus nuncupatum."
The date of the deed is 21 Feb. ,1480. In the usual practice of fire -setting no vinegar was employed, but only cold water.
Hannibal's troops, no doubt, carried vinegar in large quantities with them for making " posca," as the Romans called it, i.e., for mixing it with the water for drinking, a practice which, it is stated, survived in the French army till the thirties of last century.
L. L. K.
The solution of rocks in vinegar would be so slow that I cannot imagine its ever being accomplished so as to be of any practical use, and I doubt the possibility of any extensive disruption from confined carbonic acid gas, the liberation of which would not, I think, be sudden enough, and it would escape through fissures, &c., as fast as it was generated. J. T. F.
"THE CHRISTENING OF THE APPLES " (11 S. x. 87). Hone in his 'Everyday Book' mentions the saying, " St. Swithin is christen- ing the apples," current in some parts of the country when rain falls on St. Swithin's Day. And CUTHBEBT BEDE (3 S. viii. 146) ( was told by a Huntingdonshire cottager that " unless St. Swithin rains upon 'em, they '11 never keep through the winter." TOM JONES.
"The Apple - Christening Day" is still quite a common folk -name given to St. Swithin's Day in Surrey as well as in Berk- shire and Oxfordshire, as I am told by several friends. H. K.
[U. C. B. also thanked for reply.]
SLOE FAIR (11 S. x. 90). A Sloe Fair would certainly seem to owe its name rather to the fact that sloes were sold at it than from its being held in a field where a sloe tre grew, sloe trees being much too common to give a distinctive character to any particular field. But the term " sloe tree " was much more familiar to me as a boy in the Midlands than " blackthorn " ; both it and " sloe thorn " are familiar everywhere. Your correspondent should have thought of Tennyson's " Poussetting with a sloe-tree,"
