The third question about horns I am not able to answer. It would be interesting to know where your correspondent has found it in late Greek. J.E. Oxford, April 16. 1850. _Horns._--For answer to the third Query of "L.C." (No. 24. p. 383.), I subscribe the following, from Coleridge:-- "Having quoted the passage from Shakspeare, "'Take thou no scorn To wear the horn, the lusty horn; It was a crest ere thou wert born." _As You Like It_, Act iv. sc. 2. "I question (he says), whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that, like this of 'Horns,' is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible origin."--_Literary Remains_, vol. i. p. 120. Pickering, 1849. ROBERT SNOW. _Coal Brandy_ (No. 22. p. 352.).--This is only a contraction of "coaled brandy," that is, "burnt brandy," and has no reference to the _purity_ of the spirit. It was the "universal pectoral" of the last century; and more than once I have seen it prepared by "good housewives" and "croaking husbands" in the present, pretty much as directed in the following prescription. It is only necessary to remark, that the orthodox method of "coaling," or setting the brandy on fire, was effected by dropping "a live coal" ("_gleed_") or red-hot cinder into the brandy. This is copied from a leaf of paper, on the other side of which are written, in the hand of John Nourse, the great publisher of scientific books in his day, some errata in the first 8vo. edit. of Simsons's Euclid, and hence may be referred to the year 1762. It was written evidently by some {457} "dropper-in," who found "honest John" suffering from a severe cold, and upon the first piece of paper that came to hand. The writer's caligraphy bespeaks age, and the punctuation and erasures show him to have been a literary man, and a careful though stilted writer. It is not, however, a hand of which I find any other exemplars amongst Nourse's correspondence. "Take two glasses of the best brandy, put them into a cup which may stand over the fire; have two long wires, and put an ounce of sugar-candy upon the wires, and set the brandy on fire. Let it burn till it is put out by itself, and drink it before you go to bed. "To make it more pectoral, take some rosemary and put it in the brandy, infused for a whole day, before you burn it." This is the fundamental element of all the quack medicines for "coughs, colds, catarrhs, and consumption," from Ford's "Balsam of Horehound" to Dr. Solomon's "Balm of Gilead." T.S.D. Shooter's Hill, April 4. _Howkey or Horkey_ (No. 17. p. 263.).--Does the following passage from Sir Thomas Overbury's _Witty Descriptions of the Properties of sundry Persons_, first published, I believe, in 1614, afford any clue to the etymology of this word? It occurs in the description of a Frankling or Yeoman:--