The vulgar error expressed in these lines is not extinct, even at the present day. The only explanation I have seen of its origin is given in Barrington's Observations on the more Ancient Statutes, p. 474., on 3 Hen. VIII., where, after referring in the text to a statute by which surgeons were exempted from attendance on juries, he adds in a note:
"It may perhaps be thought singular to suppose that this exemption from serving on juries is the foundation of the vulgar error, that a surgeon or butcher from the barbarity of their business may be challenged as jurors."
Sir H. Spelman, in his Answer to an Apology for Archbishop Abbott, says,—
"In our law, those that were exercised in slaughter of beasts, were not received to be triers of the life of a man."—Posth. Works, p. 112.; St. Trials, vol. ii. p. 1171.
So learned a man as Spelman must, I think, have had some ground for this statement, and could scarcely be repeating a vulgar error taking its rise from a statute then hardly more than a hundred years old. I hope some of your readers will be able to give a more satisfactory explanation than Barrington's.
E. S. T. T.
Redwing's Nest.—I trust you will excuse my asking, if any of your correspondents have found the nest of the redwing? for I lately discovered what I consider as the egg of this bird in a nest containing four blackbirds' eggs. The egg answers exactly the description given of that of the redwing thrush, both in Bewick and Wood's British Song Birds; being bluish-green, with a few largish spots of a dark brown colour. The nest was not lined with mud, as is usually the case with a blackbird's, but with moss and dried grass.
Has the egg of the redwing been ever seen in this situation before?
C. T. A.
Lyndon.