access to.

ILL

G. A. TAYLOR. LEGITIMATE ROYALTIES (clii. 119, 159, 195, 285; cliii. 106, 250). In the Boston Transcript of Boston, Mass., U.S.A., of Feb. 2, 1928, we read that at a meeting of the New England Historic-Genealogical Society an exhibition of shawls, scarfs, veils and fichus" of an early day was given, and "it was announcel that one fichu is now owned by the great-great-granddaughter of Mrs. Fitzherbert, wife of George IV, the original owner."

ARLINGTON.

NENTLEMAN VOLUNTEER, R. N. (cliv. 117). A gentleman volunteer belonged to the first class of Officer's servants, as set out in an order of April 16, 1794, being Young gentlemen, not under eleven years of age, who were intended for the sea service," and who would rise to commissioned rank in due course. They probably originated in 1676, when, in order to secure means for recruiting the corps of naval officers, Charles II. admitted lads of good family as Volunteers, " of which every ship was allowed to take on board a fixed proportion according to the size of the ship. The volunteers were not to be more than sixteen years of age, and were paid £22 10s. Od. per

DEFINI

ARCHIBALD SPARKE.

The Library.

Rossel Island, An Ethnological Study. By W. E. Armstrong. (Cambridge University Press. 18s. net).

is most easterly of the Louisiade group, Papua, with a greatest length of about twenty inhabited by a population of about fifteen and a greatest breadth of about ten miles, and hundred persons Rossel is strangely isolated from the rest of the world and presents several curious points for ethnological study which have not hitherto been examined. So little, strong's visit that he has put together in an indeed, was known of it before Mr. ArmAppendix all the first-hand accounts of Rossel that have any anthropological or historical interest, and they fill no great number of pages. The inhabitants were first made known to the world in general in 1859 by M. de Rochas, who went there as passenger on a French vessel from New Caledonia sent to bring off three hundred Chinese who had been wrecked on the island a few months before. had been eaten. The natives are not, however, Few of these were found alive: most of them cannibals in mere savagery: their eating of human flesh is a ceremonial affair, and there is reason to think that, in the matter of these unfortunate Chinese, there a special leading man among them who had contracted agency at work in the dominance of a terrible an appetite for this gruesome viand. Naturally, there has been fairly often a tendency to mingle some little horror and contempt with subsequent descriptions of the islanders, but we gather Mr. Armstrong's own opinion of them to be much that of the Osbornes, who have lived in Rossel for many years, and find the people neither particularly attractive nor particularly repulsive. Their after considerable attention paid to it is not language is unusually difficult, and our author, satisfied with what he has been able to bring together in the way of vocabulary and grammar. The points of interest, as compared with Melanesian languages are use of prefixes instead of suffixes to denote personal possession; no distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person plural; and irregularities in the conjugation of the verb.

IN island of about a hundred square miles,

was

In the excellent chapter on Material Culture Mr. Armstrong gives diagrams of the two types of houses and the four types of canoes, which show considerable ingenuity and skill. Rossel is no less careful than the rest of Papua in the laying of taboos, and the application of spells to the making and use of dwellings and implements. In his chapter entitled Tribe, Clan, and family' Mr. Armstrong makes some criticism of previous sociological study, suggesting that clans and occupational groups ought not to be taken as of the same logical type as family and other relationship groups, which latter he would denominate groupings," founding his distinction on the recognition that the former are I absolute, the latter relative. In this and the

on

following chapter he sets out the relationship system of Rossel, to the effect that it is a classificatory system, of which the true theory requires some modification of Rivers's interpretation of the non-genealogical use of the idea of relationship. Here attention must be drawn to an important appendix where the theoretical implications of the conclusions derived from the investigations on Rossel are unfolded at length. The chapters on Death and Cannibalism,' on Ghosts,' on Religion' and 'Sacred Places' bear evidence, in the abundance of their information, to the closeness and diligence of Mr. Armstrong's work in the short time he was on the island, as also to the confidence he was able to inspire in the natives. They have a supreme deity, by name Wonajö, who is thought to take the form of a snake by day and a human form by night-a scheme of existence which he shares with other gods. There is a mythology by no means lacking in stories. The true home of the gods is on the floor of the lagoons which surround Rossel, and to them come the ghosts of the good dead, those who have not practised sorcery nor committed adultery nor stolen, and live with them pleasantly. Only the young, with very few exceptions, are eligible for this abode; those who have lived longer are tainted with evil and pass to an unhappy immortality. Here too, legend and folk-lore yield many curious details. Of sacred places Mr. Armstrong enumerates no fewer than fifty-five. Each of these is connected with a god or gods, whose action upon human life is now supposed to operate only through the place where he is localised, and to which an influence on some aspect of nature or of human life (weather, sickness, food supply) is referred. This, again, is a most instructive chapter.

The most admirable section of an admirable piece of research is, however, that which sets out the intricate monetary system and ceremonial of Rossel. Mr. Armstrong's working out of this may count as one of the remarkable feats in its kind. The money is of two kinds : single pieces of Spondylus shell, ground down and polished, and sets of ten roughly shaped discs of shell perforated and strung together. The value of the former would seem to be determined by its colour which varies from white, through yellow and orange, to red. This money is thought to have been made by the gods. Of the former there are twenty-two main values each with its name; the higher values beginning with eighteen are invested with a certain sacred character. We regret that it is much beyond the scope of this notice to attempt any sketch whether of the peculiar use of this money, the relation between the two sets, or the ceremonial attached to it. The whole partakes something of the nature of a game and something of the nature of the solution of a mathematical problem: indeed, one aspect of its interest 18 the evidence afforded of a sort of mathematical cleverness in the islanders. To all which solemnity and Printed and Published by The Bucks Free

ritual have to be added. Solemnity, it should be remarked, is rather a well-marked characteristic of Rossel.

Mr. Armstrong expresses some compunction on the score of omissions, inevitable in work of such magnitude to which only so short a time could be given: we are more inclined to congratulate him on the amount of information he has collected, as we do on the clear and readable way in which he imparts it. A word must be said of the numerous and good photographs.

OBITUARY: HARRY BODKIN POLAND.

WE

on

E regret to record the death of our old correspondent, Sir Harry Poland, K.C., who passed away in his sleep at his house in Sloane Gardens on the evening of March 2. He had entered his ninety-ninth year. A Londoner by birth, and educated at St. Paul's School, he became a member of the Inner Temple, and was called to the Bar in 1851. He would call himself a general lawyer, but, in his day, and has left permanent mark fact, he was the greatest criminal lawyer of criminal procedure and practice. Thus it was largely owing to the weight of his argument in its favour that the Act was passed which admitted the evidence of prisoners in their own defence. The gifts which brought him to the front, and which illustrated his work as Senior Counsel to the Treasury at the Central his clearness of mind and capacity for grasping Criminal Court, were his immense industry, detail with a kind of mathematical exactness, and his scrupulous fairness. He rein 1888, and proved himself-probably in virtue linquished his Treasury practice and took silk of his established reputation for fairness as cution. In 1874 he became Recorder of Dover effective in defence as he had been in proseand held this post till 1901. He was knighted Outside his legal work he was for some time in 1895 on his retirement from active practice. an alderman of the London County Council, ticular a writer of letters to The Times-on a and he was a contributor to the Press-in parvariety of subjects. Readers of N. & Q.' those especially of the Ninth and Tenth Series, while knowledge from the legal stores of his fine they often profited by his kindly imparting of memory, were best acquainted with him in a and recollections of books and men and sayings lighter vein, on literary topics and good stories of Victorian times.

"

Queen

NOTES: Unpublished Letters of Warren Hastings, 183-The King's Ships, 184-Marryat and Dickens: The City of Eden Caroline and Staffordshire Pottery, 186-Single ear-rings The Chandos Arms, Edgware Mountain Family, 187. QUERIES:-An old English puzzle latch, 187 Selection of pictures for public galleries-The New Annual Register 5th Duke of Gordon: portrait The Horse in Folk-songs and Tales English officers in Austrian service-A Buddhist prayer, 188-New Zealand Earthquake-Authorised Version and Revised Version of the BibleLeaning spires in London Churches with shops attached-Wilberforce: obituary notices -De Vere family-Vere Harcourt, Archdeacon of Notts-Phoenician names in England-Coddington, 189 Sir Henry Marks, attorney-general -John Busher-Newspapers and litigationSumac tree-Authors wanted, 190. REPLIES:-Letters of Warren Hastings: visit to Melchet Park, 190 Frederick Vansittart Edward Baber-Adjectives from place-names, 191-Southwark Cathedral-English in the Lisbon Earthquake-The Story of Savile Row, 192 Uncle Tom's Cabin' Eighteenth century phrases Sir Thomas White and the Kibblewhites of South Fawley, Berks, 193-Ancient Seals-Back boards-Gentleman Volunteer R.N. -Book of Crests-Bank notes-Frances Ourson: Oliver Gadbury-Pre-Roman hill-top roads, 194 -Heraldry of Oxfordshire-Edmund Spenser, his connection with Northants Dampier of East Coker, 195-St. Michan's Church, DublinThe Chiltern Hundreds-Songs about soldiers, 196 Browne Family of Ireland: Lusignan

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Memorabilia.

the

You pass

IN The Trial of Mary Dugan,' at Queen's Theatre, we have a new departure in dramatic production. The playhouse itself is transformed for the performance into the semblance of a court of justice. through swing-doors lettered like those of the Supreme Court at New York, and read the words Jury Summons and Jury Service " over the box offices. Police uniform replaces the ordinary dress of the theatre attendants, the theatre curtain has been abolished, and the stage appears as an empty court room. We found Mr. James Agate's comments on this device, in the Sunday Times of March 11, interesting. Taking it that the object of the transformation is to increase illusion, he judges it to be unsuccessful. He recalls how in the productions of Sir Herbert Tree the effect of introducing a measure of realism was to destroy illusion, and considers that it is their realism which deprives of illusion the pageants of historic events in historic settings. He gives two illustrations from his own experience: two performances of Daudet's 'L'Arlésienne,' one at Aixen-Provence, with stage-setting abominable and acting mediocre, where the illusion was perfect; and another, at Arles itself in the

flat.

66

Arena, with the advantage of fine acting as well as a 'real" stage, where the play fell After quoting Mr. Montague's dictum: "Acting is one mighty stimulant to the imagination; and... the scene of great and ancient events is another; but you cannot just

add one to the other and enjoy at once the sum of both," he suggests that the melancholy effect of introduction of the real is not confined to use of what is great and ancient, but is produced equally by introduction of minor and of new objects. Dramatic illusion is recovered only in moments when the staging itself is forgotten, which, for author and management who have been at trouble and expense to produce it, is a doleful conclusion, but has interesting bearing on some former remarks of Mr. Agate's, which we quoted at ante p.109, on the length of time direct preoccupation with the obvious externals of a play (in that case, costume) endures or had better endure.

so much

more

THE subject of the preservation of wild flowers comes up most years in the spring. We were interested in a letter to The Times from Colonel Sir Henry Knollys (Mar. 13) saying that he possesses a licence issued in 1891 by the Government at Cape Town, authorizing him, who was then commanding the Royal Artillery, South Africa, to pick wild flowers of every description. The licence, he says, conveyed warning that exercise of this practice without licence would subject the whether the penalty was ever exacted, but suggests that the warning may perhaps account for the floral wealth carpeting the slopes of Table Mountain.

offender to a fine. He failed to ascertain

AT

are

Ta hearing by a committee appointed by the Board of Trade under the Merchandise Marks Act, at the New Public Offices, Westminster, Messrs. Barling, who applying for an order to have imported briar pipes and briar bowls marked with the country of origin, made, through their representative, Mr. Trevor Watson, some interesting communications about briar pipes. There exists a fairly considerable industry in the finishing off of bowls imported from abroadpolishing them, that is to say, and fitting them with a vulcanite mouth-piece, itself sometimes imported. The briar itself (bruyère) is really the root of a tree heather, formerly grown only in France, where, however, the supply is giving out. Some 7,000 to 10,000 persons are employed at St. Cloud in France in the manufacture of pipes. Barling stated that his firm had started the

Mr.