Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 | Page 8

in 1852, we read this anecdote:
"At a City dinner, so political that the three Consuls of France were
drunk, the toast-master, quite unacquainted with Bonaparte,
Cambacères, and Lebrun, hallooed out from behind the chair,
'Gentlemen, fill bumpers! The chairman gives the Three per Cent.
Consols!'"
In Merrie England in the Olden Time, vol. ii. p. 70. (published ten
years before), will be found the following note:
"This eminent professor (toast-master Toole), whose sobriquet is
'Lungs,' having to shout the health of the 'three present Consuls,' at my
Lord Mayor's feast, proclaimed the health of the 'Three per Cent.
Consols!'"
The latter version is the correct one. It was the three foreign Consuls
who were present among this annual gathering of grandees that was
given; not Bonaparte, Cambacères, and Lebrun. The after-dinner organ
of Toole might easily, on hearing the toast, mistake "present" for "per
cent.," and "Consuls" (in the City, too) for "Consols."
A SUBSCRIBER.
* * * * *
QUERIES.
WOLVES NURSING CHILDREN.
At the meeting of the Cambrian Archæological Society, Lord Cawdor
in the chair, I read a letter on this subject from the resident at Lucknow,
Colonel Sleeman, to whom India is indebted for the suppression of
Thuggee, and other widely extended benefits. Though backed by such
good authority, the letter in question was received with considerable
incredulity, although Colonel Sleeman represents that he has with him
one of these wolf-nurtured youths.

Since reading the letter, I have received from the Colonel's brother a
more full account, printed in India, and containing additional cases,
which I should have no objection to print in the pages of "N. & Q." In
the meantime, further information from Indian experience, where
mothers so often expose their children, would be thankfully received.
I appended my letter, for want of a better opportunity, and at the
request of several members, to a paper on the doctrine of the Myth,
read at the time; observing, that if the account is credible, perhaps
Niebuhr may have been precipitate in treating the nurture of the
founders of Rome as fabulous, and consigning to the Myth facts of
infrequent occurrence. There is both danger and the want of philosophy
in rejecting the marvellous, merely as such.
Nor is the invention of Lupa, for the name of the mother of the Roman
twins, by any means satisfactory. May not the mysteries of
Lycanthropy have had their origin in such a not infrequent fact, if Col.
Sleeman may be trusted, as the rearing of infants by wolves?
GILBERT N. SMITH.
The Rectory, Tregwynfrid, Tenby, S. W.
* * * * *
"THE LUNEBURG TABLE."--QUEEN ELIZABETH'S LOVE OF
PEARLS.
In the Travels of Hentzner, who resided some time in England in the
reign of Elizabeth, as tutor to a young German nobleman, there is given
(as most of your readers will doubtless remember) a very interesting
account of the "Maiden Queen," and the court which she then
maintained at "the royal palace of Greenwich." After noticing the
appearance of the presence-chamber,--"the floor, after the English
fashion, strewed with hay,"--the writer gives a descriptive portrait of
her Majesty. He states,--
"Next came the Queen, in her sixty-fifth year, as we were told, very

majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, but black
and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth
black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of
sugar). She had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops.[2] She
wore false hair, and that red."
{356} Then comes the passage to which I beg to call especial attention,
and on which I have to invite some information:
"Upon her head a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold
of the celebrated Luneburg table."
What was this table? The work from which I quote (Recollections of
Royalty, vol. ii. p. 119.) has a note hereon, merely remarking that, "at
this distance of time, it is difficult to say what this was." If, anything,
however, can be gleaned on the subject, some of the readers of "N. &
Q." in some one of the "five quarters" of the world will assuredly be
able to answer this Query.
J. J. S.
Middle Temple.
P.S.--Since the above was written, I find that Elizabeth's christening
gift from the Duchess of Norfolk was a cup of gold, fretted with pearls;
that noble lady being (says Miss Strickland) "completely unconscious
of the chemical antipathy between the acidity of wine and the
misplaced pearls." Elizabeth seems thus to have been rich in those
gems from her infancy upwards, and to have retained a passionate taste
for them long after their appropriateness as ornaments for her had
ceased.
[Footnote 2: With respect to the rich pearl earrings above mentioned, it