Notes and Queries, Number 31, June 1, 1850

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OUR SECOND VOLUME.

We cannot resist the opportunity which the commencement of our Second Volume affords us, of addressing a few words of acknowledgment to our friends, both contributors and readers. In the short space of seven months, we have been enabled by their support to win for "NOTES AND QUERIES" no unimportant position among the literary journals of this country. We came forward for the purpose of affording the literary brotherhood of this great nation an organ through which they might announce their difficulties and requirements, through which such difficulties might find solution, and such requirements be supplied. The little band of kind friends who first rallied round us has been reinforced by a host of earnest men, who, at once recognising the utility of our purpose, and seeing in our growing prosperity how much love of letters existed among us, have joined us heart and hand in the great object we proposed to ourselves in our Prospectus; namely, that of making "NOTES AND QUERIES" by mutual intercommunication, "a most useful supplement to works already in existence—a treasury for enriching future editions of them—and an important contribution towards a more perfect history than we yet possess of our language, our literature, and those to whom we owe them."

Thanks, again and again, to the friends and correspondents, who, by their labours, are enabling us to accomplish this great end. To them be the honour of the work. We are content to say with the Arabian poet:

"With conscious pride we view the band

Of faithful friends that round us stand;

With pride exult, that we alone

Can join these scattered gems in one;

Rejoiced to be the silken line

On which these pearls united shine."

PARISH REGISTERS.—STATISTICS.

Among the good services rendered to the public by yourself and your correspondents, few, I think will be found more important than that of having drawn their attention to Mr. Wyatt Edgell's valuable suggestions on the transcription of Parochial Registers. The supposed impracticability of his plan has perhaps hitherto deterred those most competent to the work from giving it the consideration which it deserves. I believe the scheme to be perfectly practicable; and, as a first move in the work, I send you the result of my own dealings with the registers of my parish.

It is many years since I felt the desideratum which Mr. Edgell has brought before the public; and, by way of testing the practicability of transcribing, and printing the parochial registers of the entire kingdom in a form convenient for reference, I made an alphabetical transcript of my own, which is now complete. The modus operandi which I adopted was this:—1. I first transcribed, on separate slips of paper, each baptismal entry, with its date, and a reference to the page of the register, tying up the slips in the order in which the names were entered in the register; noting, as I proceeded, on another paper, the number of males and females in each year.

2. The slips being thus arranged, they came in their places handy for collation with the original....