_Sabbatical and Jubilee Years of the Jews_ (Vol. iii., p. 373.).--You must find it difficult to know what to do when a correspondent obtains admission into your columns who absolutely requires to be sent back to elementary books. On the one hand, care must be taken not to discourage communication: on the other hand, there is a species of communication which must be gently discouraged. Nothing has ever appeared in your columns which makes this remark more necessary than the communication headed as above, and signed by the venerable name of HIPPARCHUS. Your well meaning, but hitherto not sufficiently instructed, correspondent, seems to imagine either that the Jewish year was wholly lunar, or that a solar year may consist of a fixed number of (wrong) lunar months. Now, the lunar month is _not_ 29 days, but 29-½ days; and the Jews, whom he calls ignorant of astronomy (which they were, compared with Hipparchus of Rhodes), met this, as most know, by using months of 29 days and of 30 days in equal numbers. And surely every one must know that the Jewish year was regulated, as to its commencement, by the sun and the equinox. The year opened just before the Passover, which required a supply of lamb. Unless lamb had been obtainable all the solar year round, a regular lunar year (such as the Mahometans have) would have made a due observance of the Passover impossible. I hope your correspondent can bear to be told, good-humouredly, that it passes all reasonable permission that he should speculate on chronological questions as yet. M. _Luncheon_ (Vol. iii., p. 369.).--I cannot help doubting this derivation; and I suspect that the true meaning of the word is, a piece, or slice (or _vulgo_, a "hunch") of bread. When people who dined early, and breakfasted comparatively late, wanted any intermediate refreshment, "a luncheon" (or, as we should now say, "just a crust of bread") was sufficient. The Query brought to my mind some verses of the younger Beattie, which were published with his father's _Minstrel_, &c., in which he uses the word "luncheon" for the piece of bread placed beside the plate at dinner. I have no doubt of the fact, though I cannot recollect the lines, or find the book. But after searching in vain for it, I took down Johnson's _Dictionary_; and under the word I found this couplet by Gay, which is perhaps a better authority: "When hungry thou stood'st staring like an oaf, I sliced the _luncheon_ from the barley loaf." S. R. M. _Prophecy respecting the Discovery of America_ (Vol. i., p. 107.).--Your correspondent C. quotes the following passage from Seneca: "Venient annis secula seris, Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Tethysque novos detegat orbes; Nec sit terris ultima Thule." _Medea_, Act II., ad finem, v. 375.