P.S.--In Vol. iv., p. 73., Madame du Châtelet's epitaph on Voltaire contains an error, where _canis_ twice appears, but should be _carus_. The lady's object was certainly complimentary, not sarcastic. My crampt writing was of course the cause of the mistake, though, in the _opinion of many_, the substituted word would not appear inapplicable to Voltaire. A subjoined article of the same page, "Children at a Birth," reminds me of something analogous in Mercier's _Tableau de Paris_, where reference is made to the _Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences_ for the fact. The wife of a baker, it is there stated, in the short space of seven years, produced one-and-twenty children, or three at each annual birth; and, to prove that the prolific faculty was exclusively his, he made a maid servant similarly the mother of three children at a birth. The major portion, it appears, of this numerous progeny long survived. Bayle, in his article of Tiraqueau, a French advocate of the sixteenth century, quotes an epigram, which would make him the father of forty-five children, and, it is added, by one wife. If so, several must at least have been twins: "Fæcundus facundus aquæ Tiraquellus amator, Terquindecim librorum et liberum parens; Qui nisi restinxisset aquis abstemius ignes, Implesset orbem prole animi atque corporis." The accomplished authoress of _A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic_ (1841, 2 volumes) was, it is well known, one of _four_ congenital children in Norwich, where her father was an eminent physician. J. R. Cork, August, 1851. Minor Notes. _Nelson's Coat_ (Vol. iii., p. 517.).--The recognition of the coat Nelson wore at Trafalgar depends on its fulfilling a detail in the following fact. The present Captain Sir George Westphal was a midshipman on board the Victory, and was wounded on the back of the head: he was taken into the cockpit, and placed by the side of Nelson. When Westphal's wound was dressed, nothing else being immediately available, Nelson's coat was rolled up and used as a support to Westphal's head. Blood flowed from the wound, and, coagulating, stuck the bullion of one of the epaulettes to the bandage; it was deemed better to cut off some of the bullion curls to liberate the coat: so that the coat Nelson wore on that day will be found minus of bullion in one of the epaulettes. ÆGROTUS. _Strange Reasons for keeping a Public-house._--A clergyman in the south-west of England, calling lately on one of his parishioners, who kept a public-house, remarked to her how sorry he was, when passing along the road, to hear such noises proceeding from her house. "I wonder," said he, "that any woman can keep a public-house, especially one where there is so much drunkenness and depravity as in yours." "Oh, Sir," she replied, "that is the very reason why I like to keep such a house, because I see every day so much of the _worst part of human nature_." T. W.