BACCHUS—TRADE MARKS.
Wilmington, Ill.
1. Explain the use of trade marks. 2. Who was Bacchus?
L. F. Hazelton.
Answer.—1. Trade marks secure a proprietary right of a single firm in the article thus marked. They are intended to prevent an unknown manufacturer from palming off upon the public imitations of goods that have acquired a reputation from the original manufacturer; or they are a certain warrant of the quality of articles bearing them. 2. Bacchus, or Dionysius, was the Greek god of wine, and, according to the myth, the son of Zeus and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus of Thebes. At his birth he was carried by Hermes to Nysa, to be reared by the nymphs. Being struck with madness, at the command of Juno, he wandered from land to land, attended by nymphs having their heads wreathed with vine and ivy leaves and bearing in their hands the thyrsus. To him is ascribed the knowledge of the cultivation of the vine and the manufacture of intoxicating wine, for in his wanderings he carried to men of many lands this information. Those who received him hospitably were rewarded, but all who rejected him brought upon themselves some form of misery. This hero and demigod was worshiped throughout Greece, but chiefly at Thebes, with sacrifices of goats and oxen, and many noisy and indecent rites, until, in 186 B. C., the Roman Senate suppressed the mysteries, which were the principal feature of the worship.
APOCRYPHA AND THE SACRED CANON.
Algona, Ill.
I should like to know in what year the Bishops of the Church of Rome accepted the Apocrypha as a part of the canon.