Quiz of the week
1) The sculpture of Hodge the Cat in London’s Gough Square commemorates the feline companion of which 18th-century writer and lexicographer?
2) Fell, Eriskay and New Forest are all breeds of which animal?
3) Who composed The Lark Ascending?
4) A mycologist works with and specialises in the study of what?
5) Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery won which key battle in the autumn of 1942, which later became part of his title?
Word of the week
Dactyliomancy (noun) Divination using a finger ring
100 years ago in COUNTRY LIFE October 27, 1923
THAT Trafalgar Day commemorates a hero even more than a great event is a. The writer describes himself as alive and hearty, although three of his fingers have been cut off, but, he adds, ‘it might have been my head’. He describes the seamen after the death of Nelson as being ‘such soft toads, they have done nothing but blast their eyes, and cry, ever since. God bless you, chaps that fought like the devil sit down and cry like a wench’... The seaman, with his rough and ready language, has touched a cord of pathos that a finer writer would have found it difficult to attain.
