The Order of St. John of Jerusalem 628 REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES:--Anticipatory Worship of the Cross--Ennui--"Qui facit per alium, facit per se," &c.--Vincent Family--Judge Smith--"Dimidiation" in Impalements--Worth--"Elementa sex," &c.--"A Diasii 'Salve,'" &c.--Meaning of "Claret" --"The Temple of Truth"--Wellborne Family --Devonianisms--Humbug--George Miller, D.D. --"A Letter to a Convocation Man"--Sheriffs of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire--Ferdinand Mendez Pinto--"Other-some" and "Unneath" --Willow Pattern--Cross and Pile--Old Fogie --Another odd Mistake--Spontaneous Combustion --Erroneous Forms of Speech--Ecclesia Anglicana-- Gloves at Fairs--The Sparrows at Lindholme, &c. 629 MISCELLANEOUS:-- Books and Odd Volumes wanted 634 Notices to Correspondents 634 Advertisements 634 * * * * * Notes. WITCHCRAFT IN SOMERSETSHIRE. Perhaps the following account of superstitions now entertained in some parts of Somersetshire, will be interesting to the inquirers into the history of witchcraft. I was lately informed by a member of my congregation that two children living near his house were bewitched. I made inquiries into the matter, and found that witchcraft is by far less uncommon than I had imagined. I can hardly adduce the two children as an authenticated case, because the medical gentleman who attended them pronounced their illness to be a kind of ague: but I leave the two following cases on record in "N. & Q." as memorable instances of witchcraft in the nineteenth century. A cottager, who does not live five minutes' walk from my house, found his pig seized with a strange and unaccountable disorder. He, being a sensible man, instead of asking the advice of a veterinary surgeon, immediately went to the white witch (a gentleman who drives a flourishing trade in this neighbourhood). He received his directions, and went home and implicitly followed them. In perfect silence, he went to the pigsty; and lancing each foot and both ears of the pig, he allowed the blood to run into a piece of common dowlas. Then taking two large pins, he pierced the dowlas in opposite directions; and still keeping silence, entered his cottage, locked the door, placed the bloody rag upon the fire, heaped up some turf over it, and reading a few verses of the Bible, waited till the dowlas was burned. As soon as this was done, he returned to the pigsty; found his pig perfectly restored to health, and, _mirabile dictu!_ as the white witch had predicted, the old woman, who it was supposed had bewitched the pig, came to inquire after the pig's health. The animal never suffered a day's illness afterwards. My informant was the owner of the pig himself.