. v. 4.
MR. CRAIG should send to your pages the exact words of Newton and Voltaire,
with references to the books in which the passages may be found.

JOHN BRUCE.

_Engine-a-verge_ (Vol. vii., p. 619.).--Is not this what we term a garden
engine? The French _vergier_ (_viridarium_) is doubtless so named, quia
_virga_ definita; and we have the old English word _verge_, a garden, from
the same source.

H. C. K.

---- Rectory, Hereford.

_"Populus vult decipi," &c._ (Vol. vii., p. 572.).--The origin of this
phrase is found in Thuanus, lib. xvii. A.D. 1556. See Jackson's _Works_,
book iii. ch. 32. s. 9. _note_.

C. P. E.

_Sir John Vanbrugh_ (Vol. vii., p. 619.).--Sir John Vanbrugh was the
grandson of a Protestant refugee, from a family originally of Ghent in
Flanders. The Duke of Alva's persecution drove him to England, where he
became a merchant in London. Giles, the son of this refugee, resided in
Chester, became rich by trade, and married the youngest daughter of Sir
Dudley Carleton, by whom he had eight sons, of whom Sir John Vanbrugh was
the second. The presumption is he was born in Chester, but the precise date
is unknown.

ANON.

_Erroneous Forms of Speech_ (Vol. vii., pp. 329. 632.).--With regard to
your two correspondents E. G. R. and M., I hold that, with Cowper's
disputants, "both are right and both are wrong."

The name of the _field_ beet is, in the language of the unlearned,
_mangel-wurzel_, "the root of poverty." It acquired that name from having
been used as food by the poor in Germany during a time of great famine.
Turning to Buchanan's _Technological Dictionary_, I find,--

"_Mangel-wurzel._ Field beet; a variety between the red and white. It
has as yet been only partially cultivated in Britain."

In reference to the assertion of your later correspondent, that "such a
thing as mangel-wurzel is not known on the Continent," I would ask if
either he or his friends are familiar with half the beautiful and
significant terms applied to English flowers and herbs? If he prefer using
mangold for beet, he is quite at liberty to do so, and I believe on
sufficiently good authority. What says Noehden, always a leading authority
in German:

"_Mangold._ Red beet; name of some other plants, such as lungwort and
sorrel."

Mangold is here, then, a generic term, standing for other plants equally
with the beet. One suggestion, however; I would recommend the generic term,
when used at all, to