" HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF."

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2182, 22 February 1881, Page 3

" HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF."

To the Jiditor of the Olobe. < SlB, —I read with great interest, in ] common, I am aura, with all persona of on i inquiring mind, the exceedingly interesting communication in your paper from the ] ■toward of the Ohristchurch Club, in which he mode public the fact of a dead dog having i laid in the tide channel. I also read, with indignation, in a subsequent issue, a ribald letter from another correspondent touching i the same matter. I am glad to say that that letter was treated with the silent contempt it ! merited. Sir, a still more interesting fact • has been brought to light in this < morning's issue of the " Press," which, if • thoy ponder over it, will convince even the j ■coffers, who in this age are so rampant, that there is more on earth, nay, in Ohristchurch, i than is dreamt of by them in their incredulous philosophy. In the report of the Oity Surveyor made last night to the Oity Council, in the latter end of the paragraph numbered 2 he says, " One of the Council's horses . . . was lamed by a large nail laying in the road." i I hope, Sir, in the interests of science, that you will have this curious freak of inanimate nature properly investigated. Without presuming to interfere) with your arrangements, I am sure that a small portion of the time of oca of your most intelligent young men could not bo better bestowed than, following an excellent example, in giving as your own special reporter, a full and particular account of this extraordinary phenomenon. There is, I believe (but I am open to correction), just one other instance on record of a similar occurrence, and it is to be found in tomes which are open only to very few and acute searchers after truth. In the Sanscrit manuscript of Ibn Murfi'a "Fag a balak " is found a passage, which has been correctly translated by the judicious Anna Comnena into the Latin of the period Circa, 418 8.0. (see her Mult, in Pur, Lib. XI, Cap. 2, page 312, about the fourth line from the top). Speaking of the capture of Troy, Xerxes says to Boadicea—- " Quam Oroatiom dolibit, Ex Nailo, nail fit." The last line has, I am aware, been degraded by ignorant or careless translators into something very different from its original meaning. The original, however, is still in existence, and the remarkable coincidence of this occurrence of yesterday, and that of twenty centuries ago, must be truly gratifying to the humble and discriminating student. If I might venture to indicate the direction the enquiry should tike, I think what is now wanted is a description of what the nail laid, and that the product be duly nailed—beg pardon—properly preserved. Waiting which ▼ery anxiously. Tours, &c, PONDEROSIENSIS.