ave rendered an essential service to a great number of anxious
students in photography.

T. L. MERRITT.

Maidstone.

_Yellow Bottles for Photographic Chemicals._--The proposal of your
correspondent CERIDWEN to employ yellow glass bottles for preventing the
decomposition of photographic solutions has been anticipated. It was
suggested by me, in some lectures on Photography in November 1847, and in
January of the present year, that yellow bottles might be so used, as well
as for preventing the decomposition, by light, of the vegetable substances
used in pharmacy, such as digitalis, ipecacuanha, cinchona, &c. For
solutions of silver, however, the most effectual remedy against
precipitation is the use of very pure water, procured by slow
redistillation in glass vessels at a temperature much below the boiling
point.

HUGH OWEN.

* * * * *

Replies to Minor Queries.

_Earth upon Earth, &c._--I think the information which has been elicited in
connexion with the so-called "Unpublished Epigram by Sir W. Scott," "N. &
Q.," Vol. vii., p. 498., sufficiently curious to justify an additional
reference to the sentiment in question; the more so as I have to mention
the name of its putative author. In Montgomery's _Christian Poet_, 3rd
edit. p. 58., he gives, under the title of "Earth upon Earth," five verses,
which it would appear are substantially the same as those published by
Weaver (whose _Funeral Monuments_, his only publication, I have not within
reach), but they exhibit considerable verbal difference in the verses
corresponding with those cited in "N. & Q.," Vol. vii., p. 576. Montgomery
tells us in a note that this extract, given under the name of William
Billyng, along with another from a poem entitled "The Five Wounds of
Christ," by the same author, were from "a manuscript on parchment of great
antiquity, in possession of William Bateman, Esq.," of which a few copies
had been printed at Manchester, and "accompanied by rude but exceedingly
curious cuts." Now who was William Billyng? And when did he live?
Montgomery says "the age of this author is well known." The death of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom Weaver (_Fun. Mon._ 1631) applies the
Stratford epigraph, is temp. Edward III. Is Mr. Bateman's MS. in a hand
indicating so early a date?

J. H.

_Picalyly_ (Vol. viii., p. 8.).--In Barnaby Rich's _Honestie of this Age_,
p. 37. of the Percy Society reprint, we find this passage