s which proceed
from thence, whereof three branches spring into the tongue and two into
the right hand. They hold also that these animals are of a constitution
extremely cold: that their food is the air we attract, their excrement
phlegm. And that what we vulgarly call rheums, and colds, and
distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness to which
that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies
under. Farther, that nothing less than a violent heat can disentangle
these creatures from their hamated station in life; or give them vigour
and humour, to imprint the marks of their little teeth. That if the
morsure be hexagonal, it produces poetry; the circular gives eloquence.
If the bite hath been conical, the person whose nerve is so affected
shall be disposed to write upon politics; and so of the rest."

J. EMERSON TENNENT.

_Definition of a Proverb_ (Vol. viii., p. 242.).--The proverb, "Wit of one
man, the wisdom of many," has been attributed to Lord John Russell: I think
in a recent number of the _Quarterly Review_. The foundation was laid most
probably by Bacon:

"The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered by their
proverbs."

It may not be perhaps generally known to your readers, that in a small
volume, called _Origines de la Lengua Espanola, &c., por Don Gregorio
Mayans y Siscar, Bibliothecario del Rei nuestro Senor_, en Madrid, Ano
1737, will be found a numerous collection of Spanish proverbs. A MS. note
in my copy has a note, stating that the MS. made for Mayans, from the
original, in the national library at Madrid, is now in the British Museum,
Additional MSS., No. 9939.

The work is divided into dialogues; and in the copy in question are some
remarks by a Spanish gentleman, I fear too long for your pages: but I send
you an English version by a friend, of one of the couplets in the
dialogues, "Diez marcos tengo de oro:"

"Ten marks of gold for the telling,
And of silver I have nine score,
Good houses are mine to dwell in,
And I have a rent-roll more:
My line and lineage please me:
Ten squires to come at my call,
And no lord who flatters or fees me,
Which pleases me most of them all."

JOHN MARTIN.

Woburn Abbey.

_Gilbert White of Selborne_ (Vol. viii., p. 244.).--Oriel College, of which
Gilbert White was for more than fifty years a Fellow, some years since
offered to have a portrait of him