"As poor as Job's Turkey."—This proverbial expression is used in the United States, sometimes with an addition showing how poor he was, thus: "As poor as Job's turkey, that had but one feather in his tail;" "As poor as Job's turkey, that had to lean against a fence to gobble."
Uneda.
Fuss.—Perhaps some of your correspondents can favour the public with the etymology and date of the word fuss.
W. W.
Suicide encouraged in Marseilles.—In the Lancet of Nov. 30, 1839, it is stated by De Stone that anciently, in Marseilles, persons having satisfactory reasons for committing suicide were supplied with poison at the public expense. What authority is there for this? I should also like to be informed what was the occasion on which a suicidal propensity in the Milesian ladies was corrected by an appeal to their posthumous modesty?
Elsno.
Fabulous Bird.—Among the many quaint and beautiful conceits in Fuller, there is one preeminently fine: in which he likens the life-long remorse of a man who has slain another in a duel to the condition of "a bird I have read of, which hath a face like, and yet will prey upon, a man; who, coming to the water to drink, and finding there, by reflection, that he had killed one like himself, pineth away by degrees, and never afterwards enjoyeth itself."
Where did Fuller read this story? I do not recollect it in Pliny.
V. T. Sternberg.
Segantiorum Portus.—Has there been any locality yet found for this port, mentioned by Ptolemy in his History of Britain?