The expedition of Sir John Richardson to the Arctic shores, which suggests the above Query, also gives rise to another. Did any of your readers ever amuse themselves, as children, by performing the dance known as kutchin kutchu-ing; which consists in jumping about with the legs bent in a sitting posture? If so, have they not been struck with a philological mania, on seeing his picture of the Kutchin-Kutcha Indians dancing; in which the principal performer is actually figuring in the midst of the wild circle in the way described. Is not the nursery term something more than a mere coincidence?
Seleucus.
Cornwalls of London.—Perhaps some reader of "N. & Q." may be able to inform me what were the arms, crest, and motto of the Cornwalls of London? One of the family, John Cornwall, was a Director of the Bank of England in 1769.
F. C.
Beverley.
Flasks for Wine-bottles.—When, and under what circumstances, did the common use of flasks in this country, for holding wine, go out? Hogarth died in 1764, and in none of his pictures, I believe, is the wine-bottle, in its present shape, to be seen. On the other hand, I have never found any person able to remember the use of flasks, or indeed any other than the wine-bottle in its present shape. The change must have been rapidly effected between 1760 and 1790. Of course I am aware that certain wines, Greek, I believe, are still imported in flasks.
Henry T. Riley.
Froxhalmi, Prolectricus, Phytacus, Tuleus, Candos, Gracianus, and Tounu or Tonnu.—Can any of your correspondents suggest the meaning of these words, or either them? They are not in the recent Paris edition of Ducange.
Henry T. Riley.