Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/97

This page needs to be proofread.

9* s. XL JAN. si, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


89


I should be obliged for information as to the source of this knowledge. Lowndes inserts the book under the printer's name. H. K. [It is assigned to Poole in Halkett and Laing.]

INN SIGNS BY CELEBRATED ARTISTS. Will some one be so kind as to give me a list of the inns, &c., throughout the country which have had signs painted for them by famous artists'? RUDOLPH DE CORDOVA.

" ANT " AND " EMMET." A native of Oxford- shire assures me that emmet and ant are not really synonymous, but that emmet means a smaller species of ant than that designated by this smaller word. Does any dictionary mention this popular distinction between the two terms'? E. S. DODGSON.

" SHIS'N " AND " THIS'N." On p. 6, ante, a pretty song is quoted, ending with the line- Says she, " Let us go our own way, and we '11 let she go shis'n."

Last summer I heard an old woman at Little Hucklow, in Derbyshire, use the word this'n several times, and made a note of it. She was afflicted with chronic rheumatism, and she said, "It's miserable to be i' this'n," meaning "in this condition." I have also heard hisn in the doggerel

He that takes what isn't his'n Shall be catched and sent to prison.

It may be that thisn, in the sentence spoken by the Derbyshire woman, represents ftusum, the dative of the O.E. <5es, this. But how can the endings of the other words be explained ?

S. O. ADDY.

LYCEUM LIBRARY, HULL. Doubtless there are readers of 'N. & Q.' who can supply information concerning this institution. I should be glad to know when the library was founded, and whether it is now in existence. Is a list of its librarians, with dates of their service, obtainable ? I believe the building in which the books were housed when I was a child, and in which, some forty- five years ago, I first became acquainted with

  • N. & Q.,' has been pulled down.

F. JARRATT.

^SAMUEL JERVOIS. In 1652 one Samuel -IFervois, with others, had lands assigned to iiiraa in the parish of Myross, co. Cork. He as probably identical with Capt. Samuel Jer- >voia, or Jervais, who is mentioned in the iState Papers as having seen service under 'the Parliament in England, Scotland, and Kreland. I have records of his marriage and (descendants, but wish to find out where he teame from. It has been suggested that he


was of French Huguenot descent. Can any reader help me 1 ARTHUR GROVES.

11, Parkhurst Road, New Southgate, N.

NEWSPAPER CUTTINGS CHANGING COLOUR. Can any reader of ' N. & Q.' tell me why the cuttings from certain papers the Daily Mail for one should change colour after being pasted into a scrap-book ; and, if so, whether there is any way of obviating this difficulty 1 I notice, on looking over my last year's scrap- book, that some of the cuttings have changed to a bright yellow colour, and in every case this has occurred with _ those taken from the cheaper papers. Is this the result of some chemical employed in manufacturing the paper 1 ? If such is the case, it would seem useless to preserve cuttings from the cheaper morning or weekly papers, as in a few years' time they will be practically illegible.

FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.


"APPENDICITIS."

(9 th S. xi. 46.)

THE reference to the absence of this word from the 'N.E.D.' (in 1883), while it is mentioned (among other diseases) under -itis (in 1900), is a reminder of the fates of words, and not less of the chances of lexi- cographers. When the portion of the dic- tionary dealing with app- was written in 1883, we had before us a single reference, from a recent medical source, for this word. As words in -itis are not (in origin) English in form, but Grseco-Latin, and thus do not ome within the scope of an English dic- tionary, unless, like bronchitis, they happen to be in English use, I referred our quotation for appendicitis to a well-known distinguished medical professor, from whom the dictionary has received much help, asking him not only For an explanation, but for guidance as to the standing of the term. His answer was that appendicitis was a name recently given to a very obscure and rare disease ; the term was purely technical or professional, and had even less claim to inclusion in an English dictionary than hundreds of other Latin or Latinized Greek terms of which the medical iexicons are full, and which no one thinks of as English. In accordance with this opinion and evidence, appendicitis was excluded from the dictionar} 7 , a memo, of it being sent on for consideration in the article -itis; and for some years nobody missed it. But in process of time this " obscure and rare disease," or perhaps one ought to say its diagnosis, sud- denly became common, and the "purely