"It is said that the inhabitants of the Marian or Ladrone islands were ignorant of the use of fire before they were visited by the Spaniards; but even then they were acquainted with the mode of producing intoxication by means of the wine of the cocoa-nut tree."
Zeus.
Newtonian System (Vol. v., p. 490.).—The author of the pamphlet entitled The Theology and Philosophy of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis explained, London, 1751, 8vo., was Bishop Horne. He wrote it before he had attained majority, and many attacks were made upon it. It is not included in the edition of his collected works in 6 vols. 8vo. 1809. Bishop Warburton, who cordially disliked the Hutchinsonians, or, as he styled them, the English Cocceians, mentions this tract in his Letters to Bishop Hurd:
"There is one book, and that no large one, which I would recommend to your perusal; it is called The Theology and Philosophy of Cicero's Somn. Scip. examined. It is indeed the ne plus ultra of Hutchinsonianism. In this twelve-penny pamphlet Newton is proved an atheist and a blockhead. And what would you more?"—Warburton's Letters to Hurd, edit. 1808, 4to. p. 63.
The anecdote as to Newton, Locke, and Lord Pembroke, p. 27., was first told by Whiston, whose character for accuracy does not stand high, particularly when Sir I. Newton, against whom he bore a grudge, is concerned.
Jas. Crossley.
Newton, Cicero, and Gravitation (Vol. v., p. 344.).—Newton is celebrated for having proved that all bodies attract one another with a force varying inversely as the square of the distance. What resemblance has this to a statement, that all bodies gravitate to the centre of the world, or, as explained by Cicero, the earth? which at most only implies its rotundity. Perhaps S. E. B. was joking, like Hegel, when he said that Newton called 5/A2 gravitation, and inferred that gravitation varied as 1/A2. Otherwise modern philosophers, as e.g. Kepler, would have supplied much nearer approximations to Newton's law.
Altron.
Rhymes on the Names of Places (Vol. v., p. 404.).—I remember hearing the following verse in the neighbourhood of Nottingham:
"Eaton and Taton, and Bramcote o' th' hill,