_Surname "Kynoch."_--Can any of your correspondents supply any heraldic or genealogical information regarding this name, a few families of which are to be found in Moray and Aberdeen shires, North Britain? J. _Dates of published Works._--Is it possible to ascertain the exact time of publication of any book, for instance in the year 1724, either at Stationers' Hall or elsewhere? D. _Saw-dust Recipe._--There is a recipe existing somewhere for converting saw-dust into palatable {149} human food. Can you tell me what it is, or where it is to be found? G. D. * * * * * Minor Queries with Answers. _Branks, or Gossips' Bridles._--Walton Church contains one of those strange instruments with which our ancestors used to punish those dames who were too free with the use of their tongues. They were called hanks [branks], or gossips' bridles, and were intended to inclose the head, being fastened behind by a padlock, and having attached to it a small piece of iron which literally "held the tongue." Thus accoutred, the unhappy culprit was marched through the village till she gave unequivocal signs of repentance and humiliation. Can any one give some account of this curious instrument? GEORGE HODGES. Oxford. [Fosbroke says that "the brank is a sugar-loaf cap made of iron hooping, with a cross at top, and a flat piece projecting inwards to lie upon the tongue. It was put upon the head of scolds, padlocked behind, and a string annexed, by which a man led them through the towns." (See also Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, vol. iii. p. 108., Bohn's edition.) Engravings of them will be found in Plot's _History of Staffordshire_, p. 389., and in Brands _History of Newcastle_, vol. ii. p. 192. In the _Historical Description of the Tower of London_, p. 54., edit. 1774, occurs the following libellous squib on the fair sex: "Among the curiosities of the Tower is a collar of torment, which, say your conductors, used formerly to be put about the women's neck that cuckolded their husbands, or scolded them when they came home late; but that custom is left off now-a-days, to prevent quarrelling for collars, there not being smiths enough to make them, as most married men are sure to want them at one time or another." Waldron, in his _Description of the Isle of Man_, p. 80., thus notices this instrument of punishment: "I know nothing in the Manx statutes or punishments in particular but this, which is, that if any person be convicted of uttering a scandalous report, and cannot make good the assertion, instead of being fined or imprisoned, they are sentenced to stand in the market-place, on a sort of scaffold erected for that purpose, with their tongue in a noose made of leather, which they call a _bridle_, and having been exposed to the view of the people for some time, on the