aw considering that such an act was not murder.
Thereupon Lord Seaforth came to England, obtained an act of parliament
declaring the killing of a slave to be murder, and returned to Barbadoes to
resume his official duties. Soon afterwards another slave was killed by his
owner, who was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged for murder
under the new act of parliament. At the time appointed the prisoner was
brought out for execution, but so strong was public feeling, that the
ordinary executioner was not forthcoming; and on the governor requiring the
sheriff to perform his office either in person or by deputy, after some
excuses he absolutely refused. The governor then addressed the guard of
soldiers, desiring a volunteer for executioner, adding, "whoever would
volunteer should be subsequently protected as well as rewarded then." One
presented himself, and it thenceforth became as dangerous to kill a slave
as a freeman in Barbadoes.

G. M. E. C.

_Jahn's Jahrbuch_ (Vol. viii., p. 34.).--Permit me to inform your
correspondent E. C. that there is a copy of Jahn's _Jahrbuecher fuer
Philologie und Paedagogik_ in the library of Sir Robert Taylor's
Institution, Oxford. Although this library is for the use of members of the
university, I am sure the curators of the institution will give their
permission to consult the books in it, to any gentleman who is properly
recommended to them.

J. MACRAY.

Oxford.

_Character of the Song of the Nightingale_ (Vol. vii., p. 397.).--I imagine
that many of the writers quoted by your correspondent lived in places too
far removed to the north or west (as is my own case) ever to have heard the
nightingale, and are, in consequence, not competent authorities as to a
song they can only have described at second hand; but that Shelley was not
far wrong in styling it voluptuous, and placing it amidst the luxurious
bowers of Daphne, may receive some confirmation from an anecdote told by
Nimrod ("Life and Times," _Fraser's Magazine_, vol. xxv. p. 301.) of the
sad effects produced both on morals and parish rates by the visit of a
nightingale one summer to the groves of Erthig, near Wrexham.

J. S. WARDEN.

I accidently met with a scrap of evidence on this point lately, as I was
driving at midnight on a sudden call to visit a dying man. The nightingales
were singing in full choir, when my servant, an intelligent young man from
the country, remarked, "A cheerful little bird the nightingale, Si