e able to
mend the gutta-percha at any moment in a few seconds. It was not necessary
that the bottle should hold above half an ounce of chloroform.]

* * * * *

Replies to Minor Queries.

_Belike_ (Vol. viii., p. 358.).--The reasoning by which H. C. K. supports
his conjecture that "belike" in _Macbeth_ is formed immediately by
prefixing _be_ to a supposed verb, _like_, to lie, is ingenious, but far
from satisfactory. In the first place, we never used _to like_ in the sense
of _to lie_, the nearest approach to it is _to lig_. And in the next place,
the verb to _like_, to please, to feel or cause pleasure, to approve or
regard with approbation, as a consequential usage (agreeably to the Dutch
form of Liicken (Kilian), to _assimilate_), is common from our earliest
writers. Instances from Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer, and North, with
instances also of _mislike_, to displease, may be found in Richardson and
others in Todd's _Johnson_.

Now, when we have a word well established in various usage (as _like_,
similis), from which other usages may be easily deduced, why not adopt that
word as the immediate source, rather than seek for a new one? That _like_,
now written _ly_, is from _lic_, a corpse, _i.e._ an essence, has, I
believe, the merit of originality; so too, his notion that _corpse_ is an
_essence_, and the more, as emanating from a rectory, which probably is not
far removed frown a churchyard.

H. C. K., it is very _likely_, is right in his conception that all his
three _likes_ "have had originally one and the same source;" but he does
not appear inclined to rest contented with the very sufficient one in our
parent language, suggested by Richardson (in his 8vo. dictionary), the
Gothic _lag-yan_; A.-S. _lec-gan_, or _lic-gan_, to lay or lie.

I should interpret _belike_ (for so I should write it with H. C. K.) by
"approve."

Q.

Bloomsbury.

_Stage-coaches_ (Vol. viii., p. 439.).--The following Note may perhaps
prove acceptable to G. E. F. The article from which it was taken contained,
if I remember rightly, much more information upon the same subject:

"The stage-coach 'Wonder,' from London to Shrewsbury, and the
'Hirondelle' belonged to Taylor of Shrewsbury. The 'Hirondelle' did 120
miles in 8 hours and 20 minutes. One day a team of four greys did 9
miles in 35 minutes. The 'Wonder' left {601} Lion Yard, Shrewsbury, one
morning at 6 o'clock, and was at