LIME TREES (5th S. viii. 478; 6th S. ii. 85, 153, 318, 357).—MR. HUBERT SMITH challenges for a larger lime tree than the one he has mentioned as growing on the Badger Hall Estate in Shropshire." If two conjoined trees appearing as one, and forming one mass of foliage, may pass muster for a single tree, I can beat him for size, and if not, the larger of the two may be bracketed as equal in size to his Badger tree. But in fairness I will give the following extract from my Forest and Chace of Malvern :—

"Some very fine trees of the lime (Tilia Europæa), now stand in a field about half a mile south of Broms

berrow church, and by the side of the road leading from Ledbury towards Gloucester. Two of these growing near each other have become conjoined, both by the amalgamation of their arms and a lateral junction at the root. The larger of these trees is 27 ft. in circumference at 3 ft. from the ground, and is 36 ft. round the base; the other is 11 ft. 3 in. in girth at a yard from the ground, and 10 ft. in circumference at the base. The whole mass, if measured as one tree (and the interval between the boles where the connecting root joins them is only 19 inches), is full 48 ft. in circumference." In the work mentioned a woodcut is given of this dendrological curiosity. EDWIN LEES, F.L.S.

Worcester.

"BASKET (6th S. iii. 467; iv. 12).—Mr. WALFORD may like to be reminded of what Mr. Freeman says of the word basket :

"There may doubtless be some little British and Roman blood in us, just as some few Welsh and Roman words crept into the English tongue from the very beginning. But we may be sure that we have not much of their blood in us, because we have so few of their words in our language. The few that there are are mainly the sort of words which the women, whether wives or slaves, would bring in, that is, names of things in household use, such as basket, which is one of the few Welsh words in English."-Old English History, p. 28.

EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A. “LADYKEYS " (6th S. iii. 429 ; iv. 57).—It may interest MR. MERYON WHITE to hear that in our patois cowslips are called Schlüssel blumen, i.e., keyflowers. Perhaps the shape of the flower may have something to do with its appellation. FOUY DUTREux.

Luxemburg.

Cambridge.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

"The outside is afterwards protected with a quantity of sticks, giving the nest, or drey, as it is called, the appearance of a bird's nest" (Jesse's Gleanings in Natural History, eighth ed., 1854, "There were several "The Squirrel"). p. 214, drays in the trees around, in which some of the squirrels had their habitations" (Higgledy Piggledy, pp. 296-7, Longmans, 1877). One of my little girls, who found me the latter passage, says, Nearly all the books about animals call the squirrel's nest a dray." J. H. CLARK.

This word, according to Miss Jackson, in her Shropshire Word-Book, is still used at Church Stretton.

Cardiff.

F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (6th S. iv. 50)."For sluggard's brow," &c. Thomson's Castle of Indolence, canto ii. stanza 50. C. T. B.

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o. Illusions: a Psychological Study. By James Sully. (C. Kegan Paul & Co.)

MR. SULLY has given us a book which requires no little attention if its contents are to be thoroughly mastered. In these days, when fluent writers are prepared to dispatch any or all the most complex problems of life and mind in a short magazine article, it is not a little comforting to find that we have some still among us who are prepared to go to the root of the matter in their search for knowledge, and are aware that even possible truth s

of more importance than any number of glib sentences. The tricks that the fancy plays us have been dwelt upon by a host of writers, but we cannot call to mind any other English author who has undertaken to investigate the whole range of illusion in a purely scientific manner. Mr. Sully has done this, and whatever we may think of this or that conclusion, has, from his own point of view, done it most effectively. As the illusions of which he treats occupy, in part at least, that border land which, in the opinion of some, is governed by other laws as well as those with which science undertakes to deal, it is not to be expected that all Mr. Sully's conclusions should pass unchallenged. We are, however, bound to say that no reasonable man can find fault with the tone in which these dangerous and difficult topics are treated. The book is hard reading, for two reasons. First, it deals with questions with which the ordinary reader is but little familiar; and secondly, because Mr. Sully is fully abreast with the most modern researches of French and German students, and is compelled, for the sake of accuracy, to use certain words and forms of sentences which will be but dimly intelligible to most persons. Difficult as it is, we hope it may be read by many who have the care of young children, for we cannot doubt that if the nature of many of the horrible phantasmagoria which haunt the brain were understood, certain cruel indiscretions would be far less common than they are at present. It is certainly still an open question whether ghosts belong to the realm of illusion or reality, but the most convinced believer in visitants from the spirit would, one would think, admit the folly of torturing children by telling them tales of horror. The book is a coherent whole, and it is somewhat akin to presumption to point out what we consider the better portion. We would, however, direct special attention to the part devoted to the phenomena of dreams. With a very slight reservation we must pronounce it excellent. As far as our reading has extended, we have found it by far the best treatise in the language. The fact that nearly all dreams are made up of fragments of the memory of past things is admirably brought out. Mr. Sully might have quoted as an example of this a strange dream recorded in John Stowe's Memoranda, published last year by the Camden Society. "Master Rychard Allington esquere" was dying of smallpox in 1561, and he made a public confession which has, from more than one point of view, a most melancholy interest. Among other things he tells us that the second night of his sickness, when he was broad awake as he thought, his room was invaded by "strange thyngs and ferefull." He knew not what to call them, but says they were "lyke puppets." It is evident that the sick man-who had no doubt of the reality of the vision-had conjured up the delusion from the memory of childish toys or the puppetshows he might have seen at fairs.

The Poems of Master Francis Villon, of Paris. Now first done into English Verse in the Original Forms by John Payne. (Reeves & Turner.)

THE growing interest in that strange and complex personage whom Clement Marot called "the first Parisian poet" must be exceedingly attractive to the student of literary revivals. That François de Montcorbier, other wise known as François Villon, should have found fervent admirers in MM. Richepin and De Banville is not remarkable, since one is the restorer of the famous ballade form, of which Villon is the acknowledged master, and the other is an adept in that argot of which the erratic singer whom he celebrates comprehensively as "Escroc, truand, marlou, génie" was an earlier and more illustrious practitioner. Nor is it matter for surprise that Mr. Swinburne, whose enthusiasms are generous and far

reaching, should hail him (albeit somewhat fantastically) as "our sad, bad, glad, mad brother"; but it is certainly significant that Mr. Matthew Arnold, in an introduction to the flower of English poetry, should find room for reference to the warm human tears in this "voice from the slums of Paris." Clearly, after such an utterance, it was necessary that some fuller manifestation of Villon should be made to the English-reading public; and Messrs. Reeves & Turner have done well in reissuing (with some needful retrenchments) that complete translation put forth in 1878 by Mr. Payne for the benefit of a chosen few. The enterprise was in many ways a notable one. So great are the difficulties of rendering the poems in the original forms, that it would not be difficult to demonstrate that success is well-nigh impossible. But taking Mr. Payne's work as a whole, and bearing in mind that it includes the whole, and is not a merely fitful attempt at a part or parts, we must honestly admit that it exhibits an amount of manipulative skill and sustained verbal dexterity which, to those who know the magnitude of the technical obstacles, will seem little short of marvellous. That it should strike us, notwithstanding, more as a brilliant tour de force than a really representative rendering will not, after what we have said, be regarded as any abatement of praise, since ingenuity rather than absolute fidelity is the rock ahead of all translation, and especially of that which reproduces metres and forms. Those who can still spell out the originals in the old editions of Jannet and Lacroix will continue to do so in spite of latest researches and various readings; but those who cannot-and to them this book is addressed-will gain from it, and from the picturesque and thoroughly literary study with which it opens, much more than a merely vague outline of this poet of the kennel and the tavern, who betwixt two ribald or satirical staves could produce so reverential an appeal as the "Ballade pour prier Notre Dame " or " so sweet a voice and vague" as that which has for burden "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan !"

The New Phrynichus: being a Revised Text of the Ecloga of the Grammarian Phrynichus. With Introductions. and Commentary by W. Gunion Rutherford, M.A. (Macmillan & Co.)

THIS book is in several respects one of the most important classical works published within late years, because it seems to indicate that the current of Greek scholarship is now setting in a new direction in England. On the one hand, it is a deliberate attempt to dethrone the German school founded by Hermann, and to return to the methods of the great English scholars, Bentley, Porson, Elmsley, and Dawes; on the other hand, it fearlessly enunciates the first maxim of true scholarship, that anomalies must be disregarded till the rules are thoroughly understood. In insisting upon raising into a rule everything that is true in three cases out of four Mr. Rutherford may sometimes have carried too far the principles of the grammarian whom he illustrates; but the fault, if any, is on the right side. Again, following the lead of Phrynichus, his editor has been brought to formulate two very striking and useful theories-theone that in the tragic dialect has been preserved the language of early Attica, the other that Xenophon's diction is not Attic at all, but virtually an anticipation of the common dialect. Both of these theories are supported at some length, but it is impossible to discuss them here. Space forbids us to do more than call special attention to articles 302 and 325, which will probably produce considerable alterations in future Greek grammars. The book, on the whole, is a remarkable one; and we shall look forward to the publication of the authoritative work on the Attic verb which, as we learn