Notes and Queries, Number 48, September 28, 1850 | Page 6

Wilkinson says, several representations of the hippopotamus were found at Thebes, one of which he gives (_Egyptians_, vol. iii. pl. xv.). Herodotus' way of speaking would seem to show that he was describing from his own observation: he used Hecat?us, no doubt, but did not blindly copy him. Hence, I think, we may infer that Herodotus himself saw the hippopotamus, and that this animal was found, in his day, even as far north as the Delta: and also, that the species is gradually dying out, as the aurochs is nearly gone, and the dodo quite. The crocodile is no longer found in the Delta.
E.S. JACKSON
_America._--The probability of a short western passage to India is mentioned in _Aristotle de Coelo_, ii., near the end.
F.Q.
_Pascal's Lettres Provinciales._--I take the liberty of forwarding to you the following "Note," suggested by two curious blunders which fell under my notice some time ago.
In Mr. Stamp's reprint of the Rev. C. Elliott's Delineation of Romanism (London, 8vo. 1844), I find (p. 471., in note) a long paragraph on Pascal's _Lettres Provinciales_:--
"This exquisite production," says the English editor, "_is accompanied, in some editions of it, with the learned and judicious observations of Nicole_, who, under the fictitious name of Guillaume Wendrock, has fully demonstrated the truths of those facts which Pascal had advanced without quoting his authorities; and has placed, in a full and striking light, several interesting circumstances which that great man had treated with perhaps too much brevity. _These letters ... were translated into Latin by Ruchelius_."
From Mr. Stamp's remarks the reader is led to conclude that the text of the Lettres Provinciales {278} is accompanied in some editions by observations of Wendrock (Nicole), likewise in the French language. Now such an assertion merely proves how carelessly some annotators will study the subjects they attempt to elucidate. Nicole translated into Latin the _Provincial Letters_; and the masterly disquisitions which he added to the volume were, in their turn, "made French" by Mademoiselle de Joncoux, and annexed to the editions of 1700, 1712, 1735.
As for Rachelius, if Mr. Stamp had taken the trouble to refer to Placcius' _Theatr. Anonym. et Pseud._, he night have seen (Art. 2,883.) that this worthy was merely a German _editor_, not a translator of Pascal cum Wendrock.
The second blunder I have to notice has been perpetrated by the writer of an otherwise excellent article on Pascal in the last number of the British Quarterly Review (No. 20. August). He mentions Bossuet's edition of the _Pens��es_, speaks of "_the prelate_," and evidently ascribes to the famous Bishop of Meaux, who died in 1704, the edition of Pascal's _Thoughts, published in_ 1779 by Bossuet. (See pp. 140. 142.)
GUSTAVE MASSON.
_Porson's Epigram._--I made the following Note many years ago:--
"The late Professor Porson's own account of his academic visits to the Continent:--
"'I went to Frankfort, and got drunk With that most learn'd professor--Brunck: I went to Worts, and got more drunken, With that more learn'd professor Ruhncken.'"
But I do not remember where or from whom I got it. Is anything known about it, or its authenticity?
P.H.F.
* * * * *
QUERIES.
"ORKNEYINGA SAGA."
In the introduction to Lord Ellesmere's _Guide to Northern Arch?ology_, p. xi., is mentioned the intended publication by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen, of a volume of historical antiquities to be called _Antiquitates Britannic? et Hibernic?_. In the contents of this volume is noticed the _Orkneyinga Saga_, a history of the Orkney and Zetland Isles from A.D. 865 to 1234, of which there is only the edition Copenhagen, 1780, "chiefly printed," it is said, "from a modern paper manuscript, and by no means from the celebrated Codex Flateyensis written on parchment in the fourteenth century." This would show that the Codex Flateyensis was the most valuable manuscript of the work published under the name of the _Orkneyinga Saga_, of which its editor, Jonas Jon?us, in his introductory address to the reader, says its author and age are equally unknown: "auctor incertus incerto ?que tempore scripsit." The Orkneyinga Saga concludes with the burning of Adam Bishop, of Caithness, by the mob at Thurso while John was Earl of Orkney, and according to Dalrymple's Annals in A.D. 1222; but in the narrative given by the historian Torf?us, in his _Orcades_, of Haco, King of Norway's expedition against the western coast of Scotland in 1263, which terminated in the defeat of the invaders by the Scots at Largs, in Ayrshire, and the death of King Haco on his return back in the palace of the bishop of Orkney at Kirkwall, reference is made to the Codex Flateyensis as to the burial of King Haco in the city of Bergen, in Norway, where his remains were finally deposited, after lying some months before the shrine of the patron saint in the cathedral of Saint Magnus, at Kirkwall. There