"... Item quod heres cujuslibet Scologi defuncti intrare consuevit hereditatem suam."
G. J. R. G.
Ednowain ap Bradwen.
—Can any of the readers of "N. & Q." give me information respecting this person, or the family descended from him, which is supposed to have lived in North Wales during the reign of Henry VII.? His armorial badge is figured in p. 250. of Enderbie's Cambria Triumphans, and is described as Gules, three snakes braced, Arg. There is an ancient font in our church, which, when restored to it in the year 1841, after having been put to vile uses for many years, did bear this badge, but it does not bear it now. The gentleman who undertook the direction of the repair of the sculpture on the font, not having been inspired by the Professor of History at Oxford with a due reverence for antiquities, ordered Samuel Davies, a stone-mason (who is still living in this town), to make the three snakes as much like one dragon as he could. This he attempted to do by chiselling away the head of one snake, inlaying in its place the head of a dragon; and making the other heads and tails into legs with claws. The result of these operations has been a dragon of a very singular appearance. There is a portcullis with chains sculptured on one of the eight sides of the font; and it has been conjectured that the motive to the conversion of the three snakes, braced, into a dragon, was to make it appear probable that the font had been presented to the church by Henry VII.
AP JOHN.
Wrexham.
Mummy Wheat.
—As you have afforded space for a Query on "Wild Oats," you will not, I hope, deny me a corner for one on Mummy Wheat.
In the year 1840, a letter appeared in The Times, signed "Martin Farquhar Tupper," which detailed minutely the sowing, growing, and gathering of some mummy wheat. Mr. Tupper, it seems, had received the grains of wheat from Mr. Pettigrew, who had them from Sir Gardner Wilkinson, by whom they were found on opening an ancient tomb in the Thebaid. Mr. Tupper took great pains to secure the identity of the seed, and had no doubt that he had gathered the product of a grain preserved since the time of the Pharaohs. The long vitality of seeds has been a popular belief; I was therefore surprised to find that that interesting fact is now pronounced to be no fact at all. It appears, in The Year-Book of Facts for 1852, that Prof. Henslowe stated to the British Association, that "the instances of plants growing from seeds found in mummies were all erroneous." Can any one tell me how this has been proved?
H. W. G.