Query: In making preparations for the catalogue, I have been informed by a gentleman that he remembers two or more _cart loads_ of books from this library being sold by the churchwardens, and, as he believes, by the then archdeacon's orders, at waste paper price; that the bulk of them was purchased by a bookseller then resident in Boston, and re-sold by him to a clergyman in the neighbourhood of Silsby. 1. What was the date of the sale? 2. The name of the _Venerable_ Archdeacon who perpetrated this robbery? 3. Whether there are any legal means for recovering the missing works? My extracts are from Thompson's _History of Boston_, a correspondent of yours, a new edition of whose laborious work is about to appear. THOMAS COLLIS. Boston. _Painter--Derrick_ (Vol. vii., pp. 178. 391.).--I cannot agree with J. S. C. that _painter_ is a corruption of _punter_, from the Saxon _punt_, a boat. {508} According to the construction and analogy of our language, a _punter_ or _boater_ would be the person who worked or managed the boat. I consider that _painter_--like _halter_ and _tether_, derived from Gothic words signifying to _hold_ and to _tie_--is a corruption of _bynder_, from the Saxon _bynd_, to bind. If the Anglo-Norman word _panter_, a snare for catching and holding birds, be a corruption of _bynder_, we are brought to the word at once. Or, indeed, we may go no farther back than _panter_. J. C. G. says that _derrick_ is an ancient British word: perhaps he will be kind enough to let us know its signification. I always understood that a _derrick_ took its name from _Derrick_, the notorious executioner at Tyburn, in the early part of the seventeenth century, whose name was long a general term for hangman. In merchant ships, the _derrick_, for hoisting up goods, is always placed at the hatchway, close by the _gallows_. The _derrick_, however, is not a nautical appliance alone; it has been long used to raise stones at buildings; but the crane, and that excellent invention the handy-paddy, has now almost put it out of employment. What will philologists, two or three centuries hence, make out of the word _handy-paddy_, which is universally used by workmen to designate the powerful winch, traversing on temporary rails, employed to raise heavy weights at large buildings. For the benefit of posterity, I may say that it is very _handy_ for the masons, and almost invariably worked by Irishmen. As a collateral evidence to my opinion, that _painter_ is derived from the Saxon _bynder_, through the Anglo-Norman _panter_, and that _derrick_ is from _Derrick_ the hangman, I may add that these words are unknown in the nautical technology of any other language. W. PINKERTON. Ham. _Pepys's "Morena"_ (Vol. vii., p. 118.).--MR. WARDEN may like to be informed that his conjecture about the meaning of this word is fully confirmed by the following passage in the _Diary_, 6th October, 1661, which has hitherto unaccountably escaped observation: