Vallancey's Green Book.—Perhaps your readers are not aware of the existence of the curious and interesting volume mentioned in the following cutting from Jones's last Catalogue (D'Olier St. Dublin). It may therefore be worth making a note of in your columns:

"1008. Vallancey's Green Book, manuscript, folio.

*** Vallancey's Green Book, so named from being bound in green vellum, was the volume in which the celebrated Irish antiquary, General Charles Vallancey, entered the titles of all the manuscripts and printed works relative to Ireland which he had occasion to consult in his antiquarian researches. The copy now offered for sale is believed to be the only one extant. Bound in the same volume is a collection of the titles of all the manuscripts relating to Ireland, which are preserved in the Archbishop of Canterbury's library, at Lambeth, London."

R. H.

Trin. Coll., Dublin.

Herrings.—"The lovers of fish" may be glad to learn what a bloater is, a mystery which I endeavoured to unravel when lately on the Norfolk coast. A bloater, I was informed, is a large, plump herring (as we say a bloated toad); and the genuine claimants of the title fall by their own weight from the meshes of the net.

The origin of the simile—"As dead as a herring"—may not be generally known. This fish dies immediately upon its removal from the native element (strange to say) from want of air; for swimming near the surface it requires much, and the gills, when dry, cannot perform their function.

C. T.

Byron and Rochefoucauld.—The following almost word-for-word renderings of two of Rochefoucauld's RÉflexions occur in the third and fourth stanzas of the third canto of Byron's Don Juan. I am not aware that any notice has been taken of them beyond a note appended to the first passage, in Moore's edition of Byron's Works, attributing the mot to Montaigne:

"On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu qu'une."—Rochefoucauld's Maximes et RÉflexions Morales.

"Dans les premiÈres passions les femmes aiment l'amant; dans les autres elles aiment l'amour."—Rochefoucauld's Maximes et RÉflexions Morales.

Sigma.

Customs, London.

"Abscond."—This is a word which appears to have lost its primary meaning of concealment, apart from that of escape. Horace Walpole, however, uses it in the former sense:

"Virette absconds, and has sent M. de Pecquigny word that he shall abscond till he can find a proper opportunity of fighting him."

Cheverells.

Garlands, Broadsheets, &c.—Will you allow me to suggest to your correspondents, that it would be very desirable, for literary and antiquarian purposes, to form as complete a list as possible of public and private collections of garlands, broadsheets, chap-books, ballads, tracts, &c.; and to ask them to forward to "N. & Q." the names of any such public or private collections as they may be acquainted with. I need not say anything of the importance and value of the ballads, &c., contained in such collections, to the historical student and the archÆologist, for their value is too well known to require it; but I would earnestly urge the formation of such a list as the one I now suggest, which will greatly facilitate literary researches.

J.

Life-belts.—Suppose that each person on board the Tayleur had been supplied with a life-belt, how many hundreds of lives would have been saved? And when it is considered that such belts can be made for less than half-a-crown each, what reason can there be that government should not require them to be carried, at least in emigrant vessels, if passengers are so ignorant and stupid as not voluntarily to provide them for themselves?

Thinks I To Myself.

Turkey and Russia—The Eastern Question (Vol. ix., p.244.).—The past history of these rival states presents more than one parallel passage like the following, extracted from Watkins's Travels through Switzerland, Italy, the Greek Islands, to Constantinople, &c. (2nd edit., two vols. 8vo. 1794):

"The Turks have been, and indeed deserve to be, praised for the manner in which they declared war against the Russians. They sent by Mr. Bulgakoff, her Imperial Majesty's minister at the Porte, to demand the restitution of the Crimea, which had been extorted from them by the merciless despot of R——a, (sic) when too much distressed by a rebellion in Egypt to protect it. On his return without an answer they put him in the Seven Towers, and commenced hostilities. They hate the Russians; and to show it the more, frequently call a Frank Moscoff. To the English they are more partial than to any other Christian nation, from a tradition that Mahomet was prevented by death from converting our ancestors to his faith."—Vol. ii. pp. 276-7.

J. Macray.

Oxford.

"Verbatim et literatim."—As this phrase often finds insertion, even in the pages of "N. & Q.," it may be well to call attention to the fact that there is no such adverb as literatim in the Latin language. There is the adverb literate, which means after the manner of a literate man, learnedly; but to express the idea intended by the coined word literatim, I think we must use the form ad literam—"Verbatim et ad literam."

L. H. J. Tonna.