J. R. W. Bristol. [Footnote 3: [The biographical notices of Endymion Porter are extremely scanty. Can our correspondent furnish any particulars respecting him?--ED.]] _Buckle_ (Vol. viii., p. 304.).--This word is in common use by the artizans who work upon sheet-iron, to denote the curl which a sheet of iron acquires in passing through a pair of rollers. The word has been derived from the French _boucle_, a curl. The shoe-buckle has got its name from its curved form. In the days in which every man in this country, who was in easy circumstances, wore a wig, it was well known that to put a wig in _buckle_, meant to arrange its curls in due form. "When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend The wretch, who living sav'd a candle's end: Should'ring God's altar a vile image stands, Belies his features, nay, extends his hands; That live-long wig which Gorgon's self might own, Eternal _buckle_ takes in Parian stone."--Pope, _Moral Essays_, Epistle III. N. W. S. _The "Forlorn Hope"_ (Vol. viii., p. 411.).--This is no quotation; but the expression arose in the army from its leader or captain, who, being often a disappointed man, or one indifferent to consequences, now ran the "forlorn hope" either of ending his days or obtaining a tomb in Westminster Abbey. From the captain, after a time, the term descended to all the little gallant band. In no part of our community will you find such {527} meaning expressions (often very slang ones) used as in the army. A lady, without hearing anything to shock "ears polite," might listen to the talk of a mess table, and be unable to understand clearly in what the conversation consisted. "He is gone to the bad"--meaning, he is ruined. "A wigging from the office" (a very favourite expression)--a reprimand from the colonel. "Wigging" naturally arising from tearing the hair in anger or sorrow, and the office of course substituting the place from whence it comes for the person who sent it. Besides may others, _quae nunc_, &c. A DRAGOON. _Nightingale and Thorn_ (Vol. iv., p. 175., &c.).-- "If I had but a pottle of sack, like a sharp prickle, To knock my nose against when I am nodding, I should sing like a nightingale."--Fletcher, _The Lover's Progress_, Act III. Sc. 2. W. J. BERNHARD SMITH. Temple. _Burial in Unconsecrated Ground_ (Vol. vi., p. 448.; Vol. viii., p. 43.).--The following curious entry occurs in the parish register of Pimperne, Dorset: "Anno 1627. Vicesimo quinto Octobris. "Peregrinus quidam tempore pestes in communi campo mortuus eodem loco quo inventus sepultus." There was a pestilence in England in 1625. In 1628 sixteen thousand persons died of the plague at Lyons. W. E. I do not know whether the case recorded in _London Labour and the London Poor_, vol. i. p. 411.--by the way, is that work ever to be completed, and how far has it gone?--of a man buried at the top of a house at Foot's Cray, in Kent, has been noticed by any correspondent.