t 8vo. edit. of
Simsons's Euclid, and hence may be referred to the year 1762. It was
written evidently by some {457} "dropper-in," who found "honest John"
suffering from a severe cold, and upon the first piece of paper that
came to hand. The writer's caligraphy bespeaks age, and the punctuation
and erasures show him to have been a literary man, and a careful though
stilted writer. It is not, however, a hand of which I find any other
exemplars amongst Nourse's correspondence.

"Take two glasses of the best brandy, put them into a cup which
may stand over the fire; have two long wires, and put an ounce
of sugar-candy upon the wires, and set the brandy on fire. Let
it burn till it is put out by itself, and drink it before you go
to bed.

"To make it more pectoral, take some rosemary and put it in the
brandy, infused for a whole day, before you burn it."

This is the fundamental element of all the quack medicines for "coughs,
colds, catarrhs, and consumption," from Ford's "Balsam of Horehound" to
Dr. Solomon's "Balm of Gilead."

T.S.D.

Shooter's Hill, April 4.

_Howkey or Horkey_ (No. 17. p. 263.).--Does the following passage from
Sir Thomas Overbury's _Witty Descriptions of the Properties of sundry
Persons_, first published, I believe, in 1614, afford any clue to the
etymology of this word? It occurs in the description of a Frankling or
Yeoman:--

"He allows of honest pastime, and thinks not the bones of the
dead anything bruised or the worse for it, though the country
lasses dance in the church-yard after even-song. Rock-Monday,
and the wake in summer shrovings, the wakeful catches on
Christmas eve, _the hoky or seed-cake_, these he yearly keeps,
yet holds them no relics of Popery."

As I have not the book by me, and am only quoting from an extract, I am
unable to give a more precise reference.

E.R.J.H.

Chancery Lane.

It may be possible further the purpose of the noble Querist as to the
word _Howkey_ or _Horkey_, if I state, that when in my boyhood I was
accustomed to hear this word, it was pronounced as if spelt _Hockey_. As
_Howkey_ I should not have recognised it, nor hardly as _Horkey_.

AN EAST ANGLIAN.

_Hockey_, a game played by boys with a stick bent at the end, is very
likely derived from _hook_, an Anglo-Saxon word too. But we cannot
suppose that anything else was derived from that, and especially when we
come to words apparently mo