ÆGROTUS.
Cousinship.
—There appear to be various ways of computing relationship. The following is the mode which I have usually adopted, and I should be glad to know whether or not it is strictly correct:
| James | |
| | | |
| ____________ | |
| John | William |
| | | | |
| David | George |
| | | | |
| Thomas | Henry |
| | | | |
| Edward | Robert |
In the above pedigree Thomas and Henry are second cousins; Edward and Robert third cousins; and so on. If I am asked what relation Henry is to David, I reply they are first and second cousins; or else I invert the answer, and say that David is Henry's first cousin once removed: on the principle of making the relationship as near as possible by stating the degree of the older ascendant: in other words, I do not say that Henry is David's second cousin once removed. In like manner, David and Robert are first and third cousins; or David is Robert's first cousin twice removed.
E. N.
Borrowing Days.
—In a communication in "N. & Q." (Vol. v., p. 278.) regarding Sir Alexander Cumming, there occurs the following statement:
"The last three days of March are called the 'Borrowing Days' in Scotland, on account of their being generally attended with very blustering weather, which inclines people to say that they would wish to borrow three days from the month of April in exchange for those last three days of the month of March."
I remember to have heard, when a child, in the north of Ireland, a far more poetical, if not a more rational, explanation of what is undoubtedly a very common interchange of character between March and April, for a few successive days towards the close of the former, and commencement of the latter, month. "Give me (says March) three days of warmth and sunshine for my poor young lambs whilst they are yet too tender to bear the roughness of my wind and rain, and you shall have them repaid when the wool is grown." An attentive observer of the weather will seldom find the recurrence of this accommodation loan to fail. This day (the 24th) and the two last days have been of a temperature very unusual so early in the year, and I have little doubt that before the 1st of May there will be a per contrà of three successive days of cold and bluster carried to the credit side of April's account with Æolus and Co.