A "BOOK OF BULLS."

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume 29, Issue 1521, 24 December 1898, Page 1

A "BOOK OF BULLS."

Mr O. R. Neilson has edited an entertaining ** Book of Bulla," just issued by Sirapkin, Marshall. The book treats of the evolution of Irish and other bulls, and includes the " Essay on Irish Bulls " by the Edgeworths, published early in the century. At the end is a list of latter-day bulls, most of which are old. Among these are two attributed to the late Sir George Balfour, which some of our readers may have forgotten, lieferr ing in the House of Commons to a proposed loan by the British to the Indian Treasury, he remarked that two million pounds was " a mere fleabite in the ocean." And another time when speaking about Indian military affairs, he declared that " the pale faces of the British soldier was the backbone of our Indian army." Of literary incongruities it is recalled that the reason Dr Johnson gave why inscriptions on tombstones should be in Latin was—"Because, being a dead language, it will always live." Tn Johnson's dictionary it is recorded that a garret" is a room on the highest floor in the house," while the cockloft is " the room over the garrett. An eminent mathematician who was in- 1 vited to dine at a house in Bt'lgrave Square turned back, it is said, in disgust when he found it was not a square but a parallelogram. The transition of a recent Continental novel contains these sentences—" Her hand was cold, like that of a serpent." "The Countess was about to reply, when a door opened and closed her

mouth." "The colonel paced backward and forward with his bands behind his back reading the newspaper." "At this sight the negro's face grew deadly pale." Of journalistic bulls there are many. The Times, in its eulogy of the late Baron Dowse, the Trisli Judge, said—"A great Irishman has passed away. God grant that many of the great men who wisely love their country may follow him." In an article in the Spectator on the Education Bill it was stated that Sir William Hat-court's harpoons had missed fire. The Daily Graphic, in an article on Prince Nicholas of Montenegro, said —" The Princely Eagle has gut beyond his depth." Th« Irish Times, writing on land-slips, said—"To find the solid earth rock beneath his feet, to have his natural foothold on the globe's surface swept, so to speak, out of his grasp is, to the stoutest heart of man, terrifying in the extreme." ■"