entry, which is in Michaelmas in the following year, of a payment of five marks yearly "to John Englissh, Edward Maye, Richard Gibson, and John Hamond, 'lusoribus Regis' otherwise called in English the players of the king's interludes, for their fees,"—has some connexion with "the disguisyings."

DESSAWDORF.

Meaning of "Log-ship."

—If you have a spare corner, can you grant it to me for the origin of a word which describes an article used in every sailing and steam vessel in the world, and yet perhaps not one sailor in a thousand knows whence it is derived. I allude to the word "log-ship," the name of the little wooden float (quadrant-shaped) by which, with a line attached, the vessel's speed is ascertained. Before the invention of the line with "knots" on it, a "chip," or floating-scrap, was thrown overboard forward, and the "master," or whoever it might be, walked aft at the rate which the vessel passed the "chip," judging of his pace from experience. Hence the term "log-ship," or "chip," which is its true name.

A. L.

West Indies, Aug. 11. 1851.

The Locusts of the New Testament.

—While in Greece last year, I was talking one day with a highly intelligent person on the English translation of the New Testament. In the course of our conversation he said, that in the third chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel we had got an entirely wrong meaning for the verse in which we are told the food of St. John the Baptist, viz. "locusts and wild honey." I have not at this moment a Testament in ancient Greek by me but in the Romaic the paragraph alluded to runs thus: