—Can any of the readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES" inform me who is the owner of the above-named painting, which was in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy at the end of the last century, and afterwards engraved by J. Parker?
A. H. W.
225. The Lowy of Tunbridge.
—Lambarde (Perambulation of Kent, 1596, p. 425.) says, that round about the town of Tunbridge lieth a territory commonly called the Lowy, but in the ancient records written Leucata or Leuga, which was a French league of ground, and which was allotted at first to one Gislebert, son of Godfrey (who was natural brother to Richard, second Duke of Normandy of that name), in lieu of a town and land called Bryonnie in Normandy, which belonged to him, and which Robert, eldest son to King William the Conqueror, seized and bestowed on Robert Earle Mellent. I should be glad to know if there is at present any trace of such a territory remaining.
E. N. W.
Southwark, Sept. 28, 1851.
226. Bones of Birds.
—Some naturalists speak of the hollowness of the bones of birds as giving them buoyancy, because they are filled with air. It strikes me that this reason is inconclusive, for I should suppose that in the atmosphere, hollow bones, quite empty, would be more buoyant than if filled with air. Perhaps one of your correspondents will kindly enlighten my ignorance, and explain whether the air with which the bones are filled is not used by the bird in respiration in the more rarefied altitudes, and the place supplied by a more gaseous expiration of less specific gravity than the rarefied atmosphere?
Although of a different class from the queries you usually insert, I hope you will not think this foreign to the purpose of your useful miscellany.
AN AERONAUT.