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at Cambridge and Oxford *, and afforded a maintenance to many poor students. She established at Cambridge a perpetual public preacher t. She built an almshouse at Westminster for poor women, which was afterwards turned into a lodging house for the singing men of the college; and founded a free school at Wymbourn in Dorsetshire. She lived some time at Torring ton, in Devonshire; and, pitying the minister for his long walk from the parsonage house to the church, gave to him and his successors the manor-house, and the lands belonging, lying close to the church.

These virtuous deeds breathe so true a spirit of piety and charity that the superstitions which marked Margaret's character, if they claim notice, can be considered only as the excess of the same principles. She is commonly drawn in the habit of a nun, and was admitted into the fraternity of five religious houses, Westminster, Crowlandt, Durham, Wymbourn, and the Charter-house. She was at prayers soon after five o'clock in the morning, and went through the religious offices of the church of Rome with so much strictness, and added so many private devotions, as to occasion bodily indispositions. She had girdles and under-garments of hair; and when in health, constantly wore one next her person on certain days in every week: so that she declared to her confessor that her skin was frequently lacerated.

Her life was chequered by all the turns of good and ill-fortune, incident to the troublesome period at which

*This lectureship was instituted in the year 1502, (18 Hen. VII.) on the feast of the nativity, and endowed with twenty marks per ann. payable by the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, which house she had endowed with a yearly revenue of 87.

The lectureship at Oxford was founded at the same time, and with the same endowment.

Established 30th Oct. 1504, with a stipend of 101. per ann. payable by the Abbot and Convent of Westminster. The duty of this preacher was to preach, at least six sermons every year, at several churches (specified in the foundation) in the dioceses of London, Ely, and Lincoln; but the duty is now altered to one sermon in the university at the beginning of Easter.

The Countess of Richmond and her mother Margaret (Duchess Dowager of Somerset) were received into the sisterhood at Croyland, in the year 1464-vide Gough's Croyland, p. 71.

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she lived. She had, at length, the happiness to see her beloved son unexpectedly advanced to the throne of England, and weathering all the storms which arise from a forcible acquisition, and a disputed title, end a reign of twenty-three years by a peaceful death. She survived him but three months, dying the 29th of June, 1509, aged 69, and was buried in her son Henry VIIth's chapel at Westminster. Her epitaph was composed by the celebrated Erasmus *, who (as it is entered in an old book of accounts) had a reward of twenty shillings for writing it. Her funeral sermon was preached by Bishop Fisher, and contained a just delineation of her character, and an ample narrative of her charities and 'virtues +..

N.

SOME REMARKS

ON THE

PHYSIOLOGY OF THE EGG.

Mr. I. A. PARIS, in a letter to Mr. Maton, has made some very ingenious observations on the physiology of the egg, which I have no doubt will be entertaining to the readers of the Enquirer, and have therefore forwarded the following compressed account thereof.

The albuminous portion of the egg, according to Mr. Paris, is destined not only to afford nourishment to the ovular embryo, but also to assist in maintaining that equable temperature which is so necessary to the future evolution of the germ; because, being a very feeble conductor of caloric, "it retards the escape of heat, prevents any sudden transition of temperature,

Erasmus was Lady Margaret's professor at Cambridge at the time of her death.

This sermon was printed by Wynkin de Worde, who was printer to the Countess Margaret-it is very rare—a fac-simile of this sermon, with a preface containing an account of her different charities, and a list of her professors at Cambridge and Oxfordwas printed in small 8vo. by A. Bosville, in 1708. This too is.

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and thus averts the fatal chills which the occasional migrations of the parent might induce." That thei principal use of the follicle or air-bag, at the obtuse end of the egg, is to oxygenate the blood of the chick, if not demonstrated, is rendered highly probable from the circumstance of the bag having been found, by experiment, to contain atmospheric air. This follicle, as far as Mr. Paris's observation has extended, appears to be" of greater magnitude in the eggs of those birds which place their nests on the ground, and whose young are hatched fledged, and capable of exerting their muscles as soon as they burst from their shell, than in the eggs of those whose rests are generally built on trees, and whose progeny are born blind and forlorn. Thus the folliculi in the eggs of fowls, partridges, and moor-hens, are of considerable extent, whilst those in the eggs of crows, sparrows, and doves, are extremely contracted. The chick, therefore, of fowls and partridges, has a more perfect plumage, and a greater aptitude to locomotion, than the callow nestlings of doves and sparrows."

With Fordyce, Mr. Paris allows that a deficiency of calcareous matter is the cause of the absence of the involucrum or shell of the egg, which may occasionally be observed: though this deficiency, he contends, originates not in the privation of the calcareous principle, but in some internal state of the system. "A hen,” says he," which I kept for some experiments, had its leg broken in two parts. The fracture was carefully bandaged; three days subsequent to which, several eggs destitute of shells were found on the premises. The hen had deposited no perfect eggs, nor were there. any other birds from which these yolks could have proceeded; I therefore conjectured, that all the calcareous matter designed for the formation of the shell had been employed in the regeneration of the bone."

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L

REMARKS

MADE DURING

A TOUR IN ASIA MINOR,

FROM MR. WALPOLE'S MS. JOURNAL.

DURING my journey in Asia, I took up my abode for the night in the Khâns or caravanserais, choosing a room to myself in these bad substitutes for inns, rather than the private houses of the Turks, where my Janissary procured me admittance. For although the Turks are quiet and inoffensive, yet any thing is preferable to sleeping in a small room with half-a-dozen of them; or to a cross-legged posture at meals, round a low table, eating spoon-meats, of which their repasts generally consist. As the road I travelled was not much frequented, I was forced to stop at the houses of individuals; and arriving generally at sun-set, I found them beginning their supper: their dinner is at ten in the morning, as they rise at break of day. Sometimes a village afforded a small hut of mud and straw, purposely built for travellers: half of this was raised about two feet from the ground, for men to lie on; the other half accommodated three or four horses. In the great towns it was necessary to go first to the governor with some present, accompanied by my Janissary. At Guzel-hissar I waited on the Aga, who, after some conversation with my Janissary, ordered a Greek (his tailor) to receive me into his house, where I remained some days. Presents to the servants are always given. At Melasso, I waited on the governor; it was the time of the fast of the Ramadan: I found him sitting on his divan, counting his beads of thick amber: a pipe was brought to me, but not to him, as he did not smoke, eat, nor drink, from sun-rise to sun-set. He showed me guns and pistols made in England: these some Englishmen had brought to Melasso, coming to buy horses for the army on the Egyptian expedition. This fast of the Ramadan I found was most strictly observed. My Janissary was not so scrupulously abstemious as my

guide, who never even took snuff until the sun was below the horizon. I passed the evenings writing my journal, and reading some books of travels I had wit me. The Turkish peasants would sometimes bring. medals: these they found in the fields. The conversation of the Turks turned generally, as I found from my interpreter, on the affairs of the village, and its neighbourhood. The women never appeared. I saw some by the road side; and in the villages young children made their appearance, with strings of copper money around their heads; and the nails, both of their hands and feet, dyed of a reddish colour, with henna, the leaves of which are powdered and formed into a paste, and then applied. This is a custom of great antiquity: Hasselquist says he saw the nails of some mummies dyed in this manner. Although the Turks, in their intercourse with each other, strictly adhere to the practice of taking off their slippers in a room, (a custom of the ancients; see Martial, lib. iii. deposui soleas) yet they dispense with it frequently in the case of European travellers.

Besides rice and fowls, it is possible to procure, at many of the villages and towns in Asia Minor, yourt, or sour milk, called in Greek yaλa; caimac, or coagulated cream, in Greek, appóyana; and soft cheese, XAwpo Túpi, a literal translation of the caseus viridis of Columella. Mutton is universally preferred to beef; this, in general, is coarse and bad tasted: the former is double the price of the latter, and is two pence the pound.

A Greek labourer receives from thirty-five to forty paras a day, nearly fifteen pence: he works only twothirds of the year; the other third consists of holidays. During the four fasts, of which that in Lent is the most strictly observed, he eats shell-fish, caviar (the roe of the sturgeon), pulse, and anchovies.

I observed but few Greek villages in Asia Minor: the Greeks all seek the great towns, to avoid more easily the different means of oppression resorted to by the Turkish governors; whose short residences in their provinces are spent, not in countenancing or furthering any improvement or plans of amelioration in the con

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