138
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. FEB. is,
and, if so, the outer rim may have been cut
off around the coin, and placed so as to form
the rim of the bowl. Of course the date of
the coin is the thirty-third year of George III.
I do not suppose that ladles with coins inserted
are rare. A. G. REID.
Auchterarder.
G. H. LEWES AND LOCKE (9 th S. iii. 25). MR. BRESLAR asks when the pineapple was first introduced into England. The answer is, in 1690, the year in which Locke's 'Essay 'was published ; but it had been cultivated in Holland before then, and it was William's friend Bentinck who first cultivated it here. The name was originally given, both in Hol- land and in England, to the fir-cone, and what we now call pineapples Gerard calls pine- thistles. C. G. B.
The pineapple " was first cultivated in hot- houses in Holland and England at the end of the seventeenth century" (Pavy's 'Food and Dietetics,' p. 319).
EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.
["Kin Kina," after the meaning of which MR. BRESLAR inquires, is quinine.]
" XMAS " (9 th S. iii. 27). The Greek letters X and P formed so ancient and well known a monogram of our Lord's name that one does not see why Xmas should be offensive. Our forefathers commonly wrote Xpofer for Christopher. W. C. B.
" Xmas " = Christmas formed the subject of a communication to ' N. & Q.' (see 7 th S. ix. 447, 513), when a correspondent pointed out that X had nothing to do with the " cross," but was the Greek equivalent to Ch, and so the initial letter of the Greek name Christos. I am not able to trace when the contraction was first used, but think it must have been of a more recent date than fifty years ago.
EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.
LOCAL NAMES OF THE COWSLIP (9 th S. ii. 87, 192, 517; iii. 57). Such a book as Hogg and Johnson's 'Wild Flowers' should never be consulted for etymology. Considering that the slip in cowslip refers to cow-dung (see 'H.E.D.'), the reference to "the sweetness of its perfume" is somewhat unhappy. And considering that the g in paigle is hard (like the g in go), it cannot possibly be referred to late Latin pagdlus. WALTER W. SKEAT.
"SNIPERS" (8 th S. xii. 128, 150, 237, 438). Mr. Chamberlain's description of Sir William Harcourt as a "sniper," noted at the lasl reference, was not the first political use oi the idea embodied in the word, George
Selwyn, writing to Lord Carlisle on 1 April,
.782, during a keen political crisis, observed :
"Now people have been shot by platoons and in 3orps, the individual will be popped at^ or sniped, is they call it, from time to time, as Lord Sh[elburne] jr Lord R[ockingham] sees occasion, or as it suits
- heir present humour." 'Historical MSS. Com-
mission, Fifteenth Report,' Appendix, pt, vi. p. 621.
This carries the use of the word back much ! urther than our recent " little wars."
ALFRED F. BOBBINS,
NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.
The American Revolution. Parti. 1766-1776. By
the Right Hon. Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Bart.
(Longmans & Co.)
THE circumstances under which the first instalment of Sir George Trevelyan's history of the American Revolution sees the light were immediately and exhaustively explained by the daily papers, which are able to devote an ample space to reviews, and, in the case of a work of importance, indulge in a competition as to which shall be first in the field. When the armada has sailed past little is left to the swarm of smaller vessels except to pick up the ddbris which has been regarded as not likely to repay the trouble of collection. A few points on which it is possible to insist remain, however, to reward attention. What from the point of view of American readers may seem least satisfactory may perhaps be regarded by Englishmen as its chief attraction. To Englishmen it comes rather as a history of England than of America. The point of view is as American as it can well be, and the arraignment of an obstinate monarch, a servile Court, and a corrupt Parliament is more vigorous than it would probably have been in the hands of an American writer under the conditions that now happily prevail. Still, the picture pre- sented of English stupidity and unreasonableness is more stirring and more vivid than that of the suffer- ing and oppression that drove the pick of our own race into revolt. The book is, in fact, as the author indicates in his preface, practically a continuation of his ' Early History of Charles James Fox.' The story of Fox between 1774 and 1782 is, Sir George states, "inextricably interwoven with the story of the American Revolution. That immense event filled his mind and consumed his activities, while every circumstance about him worth relating may find a natural place in the course of the narrative which bears upon it." After or at the outbreak of war the scene is naturally transferred to Boston. The pictures of the oppression that drove into rebellion the most peaceful and loyal of peoples are not painted with special skill, and those of Lexington and Bunker's Hill are not very stimu- lating. On the other hand, the account of the con- dition of affairs in England is very striking, and the story of pigheadedness, rapacity, and mismanage- ment is told in admirably effective style. Nowhere, not even in the records of life in France at the same period, do we meet with blindness and incapacity such as were then apparent. For those whose occu- pation it was to defraud the Government and rob the people the good times were never going to end,
