19 AUGUST 1916, Page 12

ON CONSULTING THE DICTIONARY.

[To sus Emron OF THE " SrEenTos."1 Bra,—Your ingenious correspondent "W. W." has started me on a new game which may become indirectly as profitable as the pig's quest for truffles to the farmer. I have discovered a few more examples of humour hidden away in this "miracle of scholarship and cheapness "— Chambeis's Twentieth Century Dictionary. "Land of the Leal" is thus defined : "the home of the blessed after death, Paradise—not Scotland"; "cachou," as "a sweetmeat, made in the form of a pill, of extract of liquorice, cashew-nut, or the like, used by some smokers in the fond hope to sweeten their breath " ; "Now Woman," as "a name humour- ously applied to such modern women as rebel against the conventional restrictions of their sex, and ape men in their freedom, education, pursuits, amusements, clothing, manners, and sometimes morals." " Nen-paganism " is defined as "a revival of paganism, or its spirit- s euphemism for more animalism " ; " Neo-Christian," as "of or pertaining to so-called Neo-Christianity, which merely means old Rationalism." " Smoking " is "the act or habit of drawing into the mouth and omitting the fumes of burning tobacco by means of a pipe or cigar—a habit of groat sedative value " ; "smoking carriage," "a compartment of a railway-carriage, supposed to be set apart for smokers.' But the finest thing in this "miracle of scholarship" is surely the article " Zoanthropy "—" a form of mental delusion in which a man believes himself to be a beast—the devout divine, Simon Ercvne (1C£0-1732) under this belief devoted himself to the making of a dictionary—' I am doing nothing,' he says, 'that requires a reasonable soul : I am making