Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 88, July 5, 1851: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
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Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 88, July 5, 1851: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
I shall be much obliged to MR. PAYNE, or to any other of your
correspondents, if he will give me any information respecting the
treatises on the Seventy Weeks and on the Millennium, or any other
advice which may assist me in the completion of the fourteenth volume.
I may add, that it is my intention, with the able assistance of my
learned friend Dr. Reeves, of Ballymena, to print a complete index to
Ussher's Works, which will be compiled by Dr. Reeves, and is now in
active preparation. The references to the more important works, such as
the _Primordia_, and _Annals_, will be so contrived as to be applicable
to the old editions, as well as to Dr. Elrington's edition. This Index
will form the seventeenth volume of the Works.
JAMES H. TODD.
Trinity Coll., Dublin, June 21. 1851.
Replies to Minor Queries.
_Mind your P's and Q's_ (Vol. iii., pp. 328. 357. 463. 523.).--I have
always thought that the phrase "Mind your P's and Q's" was derived from
the school-room or the printing-office. The forms of the small "p" and
"q" in the Roman type, have always been puzzling to the child and the
printer's apprentice. In the one, the down-ward stroke is on the left of
the oval; in the other, on the right. Now, when the types are reversed,
as they are when in the process of distribution they are returned by the
compositor to his case, the mind of the young printer is puzzled to
distinguish the "p" from the "q." In sorting _pie_, or a mixed heap of
letters, where the "p" and the "q" are not in connexion with any other
letters forming a word, I think it would be almost impossible for an
inexperienced person to say which is which upon the instant. "Mind your
_p_'s and _q_'s"--I write it thus, and not "Mind your P's and Q's"--has
a higher philosophy than mind your _toupées_ and your _queues_, which
are things essentially different, and impossible to be mistaken. It
means, have regard to small differences; do not be deceived by apparent
resemblances; learn to discriminate between things essentially distinct,
but which look the same; be observant; be cautious.
CHARLES KNIGHT.
_Serius Seriadesque_ (Vol. iii., p. 494.).--Il Serio, a tributary to the
Adda, which falls into the Po. Il Serio is, like the Po, remarkable for
the quantity of foam floating upon it, and also for disappearing under
ground, through part of its course.
DE CAMERA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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