water, which serves to take away that which passes over
the millwheel at right angles to where the rock has been cut away to make
room for the millwheel itself. That which has been cut away in making the
trench, is a seam of clay slate about three feet six inches in breadth,
between two solid whinstone rocks. The length of the passage, from the east
end, which terminated in rock, to the mill, is sixty-three feet. The mill
is thirty feet, and the cut beyond it twelve feet: in all, one hundred and
five feet. The average depth is about twelve feet; but as it slopes down to
the stream, some of it is sixteen feet deep. It has been suggested that it
might have been dug out in order to obtain the coarse slate; but the
difficulty of working a confined seam like this, in any other way than by
picking it out piecemeal with immense labour, seems impossible. It can
never have been meant to convey water to the mill, as the highest part
begins in the solid rock, and the object must always have been to keep the
water on the highest possible level, until it reached the top of the
millwheel. Nothing was found in either of these excavations.--After this
long discussion, Query, What can have been the purpose for which these
laborious works can have been executed?

J. S. S.

* * * * *

PRONUNCIATION OF "HUMBLE."

(Vol. viii., pp. 229. 298.)

It is my misfortune entirely to differ from MR. DAWSON (p. 229.) and MR.
CROSSLEY (p. 298.) as to the pronunciation of _humble_; and permit me to
say (with all courtesy) that I was unfeignedly surprised at the latter's
assertion, that sounding {394} the _h_ is "a recent attempt to introduce a
mispronunciation," as I have known that mode of pronunciation all but
universally prevalent for nearly the last forty years; and I have had
pretty good opportunities for observing what the general usage in that
respect was, as I was for some years at a very large public school, then at
Oxford for more than the usual time, and have since resided in London more
than twenty-five years, practising as a barrister in Westminster Hall, and
on one of the largest circuits. If, therefore, I have not had ample means
of judging as to the pronunciation of _humble_, I know not where the means
are to be found; especially as I doubt whether _humble_ and _humbly_ are
anywhere so frequently used as in courts: a counsel rarely making a speech
without "_humbly_ submitting" or making a "_humble_ appl