The observing traveller, in addition to the wonders of nature, should not fail to note there the social and physical condition, and diseases of the inhabitants. He will there find still lingering, fostered by dirt, bad food, and a squalid way of living, the true leprosy (in Icelandic, _spetalska_) which prevailed throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and which now survives only there, in Norway, and in some secluded districts in central and southern Europe. He will also note the remarkable exemption of the Icelanders from pulmonary consumption; a fact which seems extraordinary, considering the extreme dampness, inclemency, and variability of the climate. But the consumptive tendency is always found to cease north of a certain parallel of latitude. WM. E. C. NOURSE. 8. Burwood Place, Hyde Park. _Starvation, an Americanism._--Strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless quite true that this word, now unhappily so common on every tongue, as representing the condition of so many of the sons and daughters of the sister lands of Great Britain and Ireland, is not to be found in _our own_ English dictionaries; neither in Todd's _Johnson_, published in 1826, nor in Richardson's, published ten years later, nor in Smart's--Walker remodelled--published about the same time as Richardson's. It is Webster who has the credit of importing it from his country into this; and in a supplement issued a few years ago, Mr. Smart adopted it as "a _trivial_ word, but in very common, and at present good use." What a lesson might Mr. Trench read us, that it should be so! Our older poets, to the time of Dryden, used the compound "hunger-starved." We now say _starved_ with cold. Chaucer speaks of Christ as "He that _starf_ for our redemption," of Creseide "which well nigh _starf_ for _feare_;" Spenser, of arms "which doe men in _bale_ to sterve." (See _Starve_ in Richardson.) In the _Pardoneres Tale_, v. 12799: "Ye (yea), _sterve_ he shall, and that in lesse while Than thou wilt gon a pas not but a mile; This _poison_ is so strong and violent." And again, v. 12822: "It happed him To take the botelle there the poison was, And dronke; and gave his felau drinke also For which anone they _storven_ bothe two." Mr. Tyrwhit explains, "to die, to perish" and the general meaning of the word was, "to die, or cause to die, to perish, to destroy." Q. _Strange Epitaphs._-The following combined "bull" and epitaph may amuse your readers. I copied it in April, 1850, whilst on an excursion to explore the gigantic tumuli of New Grange, Dowth, &c. Passing through the village of Monknewtown, about four miles from Drogheda, I entered a burial-ground surrounding the ivy-clad ruins of a chapel. In the midst of a group of dozen or more tombstones, some very old, all bearing the name of "Kelly," was a modern upright slab, well executed, inscribed,--