As the Oxford statutes have recently been published, the matter is not so much in the dark,—black silk being the material prescribed for the lining of hoods of Doctors in Divinity, and those of the doctors in the other faculties being prescribed to be of silk of any intermediate colour, which the Oxford doctors understand to mean a deep rose-colour.
D.C.L.
U. University Club, Dec. 4. 1850.
Euclid and Aristotle.—The ordinary chronologies place Aristotle as nearly a century anterior to Euclid; but Professor De Morgan ("Eucleides," in Dr. Smith's Biographical Dictionary) considers them as contemporary. Any of your readers conversant with the subject will oblige me by saying which is right, and likewise why so.
GEOMETRICUS.
Ventriloquism. Fanningus the King's Whisperer.—To the Query respecting Brandon the juggler (Vol. ii., p. 424.), I beg leave to add another somewhat similar. Where is any information to be obtained of "The King's Whisperer, εγγαστριμυθος, nomine Fanningus, who resided at Oxford in 1643?"
T.J.
Frances Lady Norton.—Can any of your readers give me an account of the life of Frances Lady Norton, who wrote a work, entitled The Applause of Virtue, in Four Parts, consisting of Divine and Moral Essays towards the obtaining of True Virtue, 4to. 1705? It is a very delightful book, full of patristic learning. I am aware she was the daughter of Ralph Freke, Esq., of Hannington, and married Sir George Norton, Knt. of Abbot's Leigh, in the county of Somerset. I wish to know what other books she wrote, if any, and where her life may be found? Perhaps the Freke family could furnish an account of this learned lady. The work I believe to be extremely scarce.
RICHARD HOOPER.