Minor Queries with Answers.
Ashes of "Lignites."—A paragraph has been making the circuit of the public papers, recommending the use of ashes of lignites, to preserve esculent roots. It may have originated with some dealer in lignites; but plain dealers would like to be informed what lignites are?
Rusticus.
[Lignite is a fossil wood carbonized to a certain degree, but retaining distinctly its woody texture. Dr. MacCulloch, On Rocks, p. 636., observes: "In its chemical properties, lignite holds a station intermediate between peat and coal; while among the varieties a gradation in this respect may be traced; the brown and more organised kinds approaching very near to peat, while the more compact kinds, such as jet, approximate to coal.">[
Bishop Bathurst.—I have heard it often asserted that the late Dr. Bathurst, Bishop of Norwich, was the youngest of forty-two children. Can this
be satisfactorily ascertained? I remember hearing it many years since during the bishop's lifetime. Such a circumstance is not beyond the bounds of possibility, if we are to believe the Parish Register of Bermondsey; for there appears an entry there of the marriage, on Jan. 4, 1624-5, of James Harriott, Esq., one of the forty children of his father. I myself knew intimately a lady, a clergyman's widow, who was the mother of twenty-six children (Vol. v., p. 106.; Vol. ix., p. 186.); and I have heard it said that one of her brothers-in-law was father of twenty-four, and another of fourteen children. The late Sir Robert Wigram, Bart., had twenty-four children: he died at the age of eighty-six.
Y. S. M.
[Mrs. Thistlethwaite, in her Memoirs of her father, p. 6, states, that "Benjamin Bathurst, Esq., the father of the Bishop of Norwich, having married, first, Miss Poole, an heiress, he had issue by her twenty-two children; by his second wife, Miss Brodrick, daughter of Dr. Brodrick, a Brother of Lord Midleton's, Mr. Bathurst had a second family of fourteen children, of whom my father was third child and second son. He was a seven months' child, and I have heard that he was so extremely small an infant, that he could not be dressed like other children for some time after his birth, but was obliged to be wrapped in cotton. My father used to say in a joke, that he was wrapped in cotton, and put into a quart mug." The bishop's father had four children, one daughter and three sons. These four had a hundred children between them, thirty-six of whom fell to the lot of the bishop's father.]
"Selah."—What is the meaning of the word Selah, which occurs so often in the Psalms? I have observed that most people, in reading, omit it. Should it be read or not?
F. M. Middleton.