experienced the ceremony myself.

H.

Charm for Warts.—I remember in Leicestershire seeing the following charm employed for removal of a number of warts on my brother, then a child about five years old. In the month of April or May he was taken to an ash-tree by a lady, who carried also a paper of fresh pins; one of these was first struck through the bark, and then pressed through the wart until it produced pain: it was then taken out and stuck into the tree. Each wart was thus treated, a separate pin being used for each. The warts certainly disappeared in about six weeks. I saw the same tree a year or two again, when it was very thickly studded over with old pins, each the index of a cured wart.

T. J.

Liverpool.

The Devil.—

"According to the superstition of the west countries if you meet the devil, you may either cut him in half with a straw, or force him to disappear by spitting over his horns."—Essays on his own Times, by S. T. Coleridge, vol. iii. p. 967.

J. M. B.

If you sing before breakfast you will cry before supper.

If you wish to have luck, never shave on a Monday.

J. M. B.

"Winter Thunder," &c.—I was conversing the other day with a very old farmer on the disastrous rains and storms of the present season, when he told me that he thought we had not yet seen the worst; and gave as a reason the following proverb:

H. T.

Ingatestone Hall, Essex.

MALTA THE BURIAL-PLACE OF HANNIBAL.

Malta affords a fine field for antiquarian research; and in no part more so than in the neighbourhood of Citta Vecchia, where for some distance the ground is dotted with tombs which have already been opened.

Here, in ancient times, was the site of a burial-place, but for what people, or at what age, is now unknown; and here it is that archæologists should commence their labours, that in the result they may not be disappointed. In some of the tombs which have been recently entered in this vicinity, fragments of linen cloth have been seen, in which bodies were enveloped at the time of their burial; in others glass, and earthen candlesticks, and jars, hollow throughout and of a curious shape; while in a few were earrings and finger-rings made of the purest gold, but they are rarely found.

There cannot be a doubt that many valuable antiquities will yet be discovered, and in support of this presumption I would only refer to those now known to exist; the Giant's Tower at Gozo, the huge tombs in the Bengemma Hills, and those extensive and remarkable ruins at Krendi, which were excavated by order of the late Sir Henry Bouverie, and remain as a lasting and honourable memento of his rule, being among the number.

An antiquary, being at Malta, cannot pass a portion of an idle day more agreeably than in visiting some singular sepulchral chambers not far from Notabile, which are built in a rocky eminence, and with entrances several feet from the ground. These are very possibly the tombs of the earliest Christians, who tried in their erection "to imitate that of our Saviour, by building them in the form of caves, and closing their portals with marble or stone." When looking at these tombs from a terrace near the Cathedral, we were strongly reminded of those which were seen by our lately deceased friend Mr. John L. Stephens, and so well described by him in his Incidents of Travel in eastern lands. Had we time or space, we should more particularly refer to several other interesting remains now scattered over the island, and, among them, to that curious sepulchre not a long time ago discovered in a garden at Rabato. We might write of the inscription on its walls, "In pace posita sunt," and of the figures of a dove and hare which were near it, to show that the ashes of those whom they buried there were left in peace. We might also make mention, more at length, of a tomb which was found at the point Beni Isa in 1761, having on its face a Phœnician inscription, which Sir William Drummond thus translates:

"The interior room of the tomb of Ænnibal, illustrious in the consummation of calamity. He was beloved. The people, when they are drawn up in order of battle, weep for Ænnibal the son of Bar Malek."

Sir Grenville Temple remarks, that the great Carthaginian general is supposed, by the Maltese, to have been a native of their island, and one of the Barchina family, once known to have been established in Malta; while some writers have stated that his remains were brought from Bithynia to this island, to be placed in the tomb of his ancestors; and this supposition, from what we have read, may be easily credited.

Might I ask if there is any writer, ancient or modern, who has recorded that Malta was not the burial-place of Hannibal?

W. W.

Malta.

Minor Notes.

Waterloo.—I do not know whether, in any of the numerous lives of the late Duke of Wellington, the following fact has been noticed. In Strada's History of the Belgian war (a work which deserves to be better known and appreciated than it is at present), there occurs a passage which shows that, about three hundred years since, Waterloo was the scene of a severe engagement; so that the late sanguinary struggle was not the first this battle-ground has to boast of. The passage occurs in Famianæ Stradæ de Bello Belgico, Decas prima, lib. vi. p. 256., edit. Romæ, 1653; where, after describing a scheme on the part of the insurgents for surprising Lille, and its discovery by the Royalists, he goes on:

"Et Rassinghemius de Armerteriensi milite inaudierat: nihilqve moratvs selectis centvmqvinqvaginta peditibvs et equitibus sclopetariis fermè qvinqveginta prope Waterlocvm pagvm pvgnam committit."

What makes this more curious is, that, like the later battle, neither of the contending parties on this occasion were natives of the country in which the battle was fought, they being the French Calvinists on one side and the Spaniards on the other.

Philobiblion.

"Tuch."—In "The Synagogue," attached to Herbert's Poems, but written by Chr. Harvie, M.A., is a piece entitled "The Communion Table," one verse of which is as follows:

S. T. Coleridge, in a note on this passage, printed in Mr. Pickering's edition of Herbert, 1850 (fcap. 8vo.), says:

"Tuch rhyming to much, from the German tuch, cloth: I never met with it before as an English word. So I find platt, for foliage, in Stanley's Hist. of Philosophy, p. 22."

Whether Coleridge rightly appreciated Stanley's use of the word platt, I shall not determine; but with regard to touch, it is evident that he went (it was the tendency of his mind) to Germany for error, when truth might have been discovered nearer home. The context shows that cloth could not have been intended, for who ever heard of a table or altar made of cloth? The truth is that the poet meant touchstone, which the author of the Glossary of Architecture (3rd edit., text and appendix) rightly