lf?

D. K.

_When Deans first styled Very Reverend._--Can any of your correspondents
state at what period Deans of Cathedrals were first designated as "Very
Reverend?" Forty years ago they prayed at Christ Church, Oxford, for the
Reverend the Deans, the Canons, &c. The inscription on the stone covering
the remains of Sir Richard Kaye, Bart., Dean of Lincoln, who died in 1809,
terms him "the Reverend."

X. X.

_Form of Prayer at the Healing_ (Vol. iii., pp. 42. 93. 148.).--As my note
on this subject has been misunderstood, I would prefer this Query. What is
the earliest edition of the Prayer Book in which the Form for the Healing
appears? Mr. Lathbury states 1709, which is I believe the generally
received date; but it is found in one printed in London in 1707 immediately
before the Articles. Its appearance in the Prayer Book is entirely
unauthorised; and it would be curious to ascertain also, whether it found a
place in the Prayer Books printed at Oxford or Cambridge.

N. E. R. (a Subscriber).

{353}

_West Chester._--In maps of Cheshire, 1670, and perhaps later, the city of
Chester is thus called. Why is it so designated? It does not appear to be
so called now. Passing through a village only six miles from London last
week, I heard a mother saying to a child, "If you are not a good girl I
will send you to West Chester." "Go to Bath" is common enough; but why
should either of these places be singled out? The Cheshire threat seems to
have been in use for some time, unless that city is still called West
Chester.

JOHN FRANCIS X.

_The Milesians._--With respect to the origin of the Milesian race little
seems to be known, even by antiquaries who have given their attention to
the archaeology of Ireland, the inhabitants of which country are reputed to
have been of Milesian origin. The Milesian race, also, is thought to have
come over from Spain, a conjecture which is rather confirmed by the
etymology of the names of some Irish towns, where the letters _gh_, as in
Drogheda and Aghada, if so convertible, have the same pronunciation as the
Spanish _j_ in Aranjuez and Badajoz, and also by the expression and cast of
features marked in many of the peasants of the south-west of Ireland, which
strikingly resemble those of the children of Spain.

There is also another subject of antiquity in Ireland, and closely
connected with her early history, of the true origin of which the world
seems much in ignorance, viz. her Round