Replies to Minor Queries.
Vanes (Vol. v., p. 490.).—Taking up by accident the other day your fifth volume, I saw what I believe is a still unanswered Query respecting the earliest notice of vanes as indicators of the wind; and turning to my notes I found the following extract from Beckman's Inventions, &c.:
"In Ughelli Italia Sacra, Romæ 1652, fol. iv., p 735., we find the following inscription on a weathercock then existing at Brixen; 'Dominus Rampertus Episc. gallum hunc fieri præcepit an. 820.'"
L. A. M.
Loselerius Villerius (Vol. vii., p. 454.).—I beg to inform S. A. S. that his copy of the New Testament, which wants the title-page, was printed by Henry Stephens the second, at Geneva, in the year 1580. As to it being "valuable," I should not consider him unfortunate if he could exchange it for a shilling.
Loselerius Villerius was Pierre l'Oyseleur de Villiers, a professor of Genevan divinity, who came over to London, and there published Beza's Latin version of the New Testament, in 1574. He was not, however, as your correspondent supposed him to be, the editor of the decapitated volume in question; but Beza transferred his notes to an impression completed by himself.
S. A. S. has, in the next place, inquired for any satisfactory "list of editions of the Bible." It appears that, so far as he is concerned, Le Long, Boerner, Masch, and Cotton have lived and laboured in vain.
The folio Bible lastly described by your correspondent is not "so great a curiosity" as family tradition maintained. The annotations "placed in due order" are merely the Genevan notes.—See
the Archdeacon of Cashel's very accurate and excellent work, Editions of the Bible, and Parts thereof, in English, p. 75.: Oxford, 1852.