424
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 B.III. SEPT.. 1917.
JANE AUSTEN : A CONTINUATION (12 S.
iii. 358). The book referred to is entitled
' Old Friends and New Fancies.' It was
written by Miss Sybil G. Brinton, and
published at 6s. by Messrs. Holden &
Hardingham, 12 York Buildings, Adelphi,
W.C., in January, 1913.
S. BUTTERWORTH.
GREYSTOKE PEDIGREE (12 S. iii. 384). Hutchinson would seem to have derived this pedigree from Nicolson and Burn's ' History of Westmorland and Cumberland,' ii. 348 foil., but the ultimate source is one of the various editions of John Denton of Cardew's ' Account of Cumberland.' This was published for the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society by Chancellor B. S. Ferguson in 1887. Denton 's stated to have compiled his ' Account ' from the records kept in the Tower of London when he was imprisoned there " on a quarrel between him and Dr. Robinson, Bishop of Carlisle." Ferguson gives the date of this as about 1610. Denton is, I fear, not a very reliable authority. His manuscript collections were described by Mr. Hodgson Hinde as " storehouses of errors." JOHN R. MAGRATH.
Queen's College, Oxford.
MAGIC SQUARES IN INDIA (12 S. iii. 383). The arrangement of the figures in the magic square found at Dudhai was pub- lished iii a recent issue of Indian Engineering and also in The Yorkshire Weekly Post. It is a square of an even order, that is, one with an even number of squares (16), and of a far more ingenious construction than the Archaeological Superintendent of Hindu and Buddhist Remains in Northern India seems to realize. It is a so-called " pan- diagonal " square, that is, not only do the figures along the two unbroken diagonals give the sum of 34, but also the numbers along the six broken diagonals formed by the 16 figures. According to a corre- spondent of the Indian paper at Bassein (Burma), a magic square for 32 (not 34) is filled in with usual Hindu religious cere- monies in a room where a woman is in labour. A Sanskrit " mantra " consisting of two lines is read, and the magic square is filled in, it being believed that this will accelerate the confinement and " remove all troubles." According to another native correspondent, the method of working out such magic squares has been well known to Tamelians in " those " parts (in the Jhansi district ?) from time immemorial ; and as a child he had known many old
pandits teaching the science of numbers
from well-worn cadjan-leaf books, i.e., books
of the old type written with an iron needle
known as " eluttani," the leaves consisting
of " palmyrah " leaves. The record, how-
ever, is still held by Benjamin Franklin's
" magic square of squares," consisting of
256 (16 by 16) squares. According to Mr,
W. W. Rouse Ball, the author of ' Mathe-
matical Recreations and Essays ' (London,
1911), magic squares of an odd order (say
of 25 " cells ") were constructed in India
before the Christian era according to a rule
which he subsequently explains, but nothing
is said about the antiquity of squares of an
even order like that found at Dudhai.
L. L. K.
CARR : DOUGLAS OF CARR (12 S. iii. 358, 393). There is a place called Cavers Carr in Roxburghshire, which I think belongs or belonged to the Douglases of Cavers. It is just possible that it is the place your correspondent is in search of. It is about 12 miles due south from Melrose.
W. E. WILSON.
Hawick.
" BULLER'S THUMB " (12 S. iii. 386). The allusion is to the dictum of Mr. Justice Buller that " a husband has a right to chastise his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb." The case which called forth this pronouncement is apparently unreported, but Serjeant Townsend (' Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges,' i. 1 9) says :
" The subject offered too fair an opportunity to the caricaturists not to be eagerly grasped at.. His portrait as Judge Thumb speedily adorned the print shops, and the women enjoyed a hearty laugh at the expense of this ungallant champion of club law. A similar ungallant doctrine had been mooted in the preceding century by a Dr. Marmaduke Coghill, judge of the Prerogative Court of Ireland, and with still more detriment to himself. Having been called upon to decide the ground of a divorce sued for by a wife against her husband, who had given her a good beating,, the venerable civilian delivered a solemn opinion that with such a switch as the one he held in his hand moderate chastisement was within the husband's matrimonial privilege. This legal maxim occasioned so much offence or alarm to a lady to whom the Doctor had been for some time paying his addresses with a fair prospect of success that she peremptorily dismissed the assertor of so ungallant a doctrine."
It may be added, for the reassurance of intending brides, that Mr. Justice Bullet's view of the law no longer prevails. The. subject was discussed in the famous 'Clitheroe Case' (R. v. Jackson, 1891), when the Court of Appeal (Halsbury, L.C., Esher, M.R., and Fry, L.J.) stated that the
