Footnote 4:[(return)]
Query whether from these bætyli our ancestors derived the word beetle, which denotes a wooden maul or hammer for driving wedges. Its head is about a foot long, flat at each end, and the rest round; so that it nearly resembles a pillow in shape, and the head, together with its handle, would well resemble a stone of similar shape suspended by a cord in the middle. Bailey derives the word in this sense, and as denoting the insect, from Sax.
Thirty years ago, the coronation stone in Westminster Abbey stood under a very old chair; and was a bluish irregular block of stone, similar both in colour and shape to stepping-stones in the shallow rivers of the north of England. It is now a very nice hewn block, nicely fitted into the frame under the seat of a renovated chair. It does not look at all like the old stone of former days. Is the geological formation of the present block very difficult to ascertain?
H. R. Née F.
POLYGAMY.
(Vol. ix., p. 246.)
In answer to the various Queries of Stylites I have to observe:
1. That the Jews do not at present, in any country, practise polygamy, it being contrary, not to the letter, but to the spirit of the law of Moses, which nevertheless provides for cases where a man has two wives at the same time; the inconvenience of which practice is several times pointed out, and which was also inconsistent with the Levirate law. (See Jahn, § 151.; and the Mishna,