It will therefore, I think, be admitted that the name of Bunyan ought no longer to be associated with this work, and that all inferences drawn from the fallacy of his having been the author of it should henceforth be disregarded.
It would, however, be desirable, if possible, to ascertain who G. L. really was, and how the spurious title-page came to be affixed by "Edward Midwinter, at the Looking-Glass upon London Bridge," to his edition of this allegory?
N. H.
Mazer Wood (Vol. iii., pp. 239. 288.).
—Your Querist asks, "Has the word Mazer any signification in itself?" It signifies Maple, being a corruptions of the Welsh word Masarn—the maple-tree. Probably, therefore, the use of the wood of the maple for bowls and drinking-cups prevailed in this country many centuries before the times of Spenser and Chaucer, in whose works they are mentioned. In Devonshire the black cherry-tree, which grows to a large size in that county, is called the mazer-tree. From this circumstance I conjecture that this wood has been used there in former times for bowls and drinking-cups as a substitute for maple. That the original word, mazer, should have been retained, is not to be wondered at. It is known that when the mazer bowl was made of silver, the old name was retained. The name of the maple-tree, in the Irish language, is crann-mhalpais; therefore the name of the Irish wooden drinking-cup maedher cannot be derived from it.
S. S. S.
Robertii Sphæria (Vol. iii., p. 398.).
—Any of your readers who are curious in natural history will find, in the Pharmaceutical Journal, vol. ii. p. 591., a very full description of this extraordinary production, by Dr. Pereira. It is used as a medicine by the Chinese, by whom it is called the "summer-plant-winter-worm," and who attribute to it great cordial and restorative powers. The mode of employing it is curious. A duck is stuffed with five drachms of the insect fungus, and roasted by a slow fire; when done, the stuffing is taken out, the virtue of which has passed into the duck, which is to be eaten twice a day for eight or ten days. In the same work, vol. iv. p. 204., Dr. Pereira gives a further account of the moth on whose larva the fungus grows.
E. N.
Southwark, May 19. 1851.