On submitting the matter to a chemical friend, he ascertained that the acid in question was the sulphuric, or oil of vitriol.  Experiments were then made with a dilute solution of this acid on {237} clean paper, and spots were produced similar to those of mildew.

The acid does not naturally exist in paper, and its presence can only be accounted for by supposing that the paper has been bleached by the fumes of sulphur.  This produces sulphurous acid, which, by the influence of atmospheric air and moisture, is slowly converted into sulphuric, and then produces the mildew.  As this may be shown to be an absolute charring of the fibres of which the paper is composed, it is to be feared that it cannot be cured.  After the process has once commenced, it can only be checked by the utmost attention to dryness, moisture being indispensable to its extension, and vice versa.

I do not know whether these facts are generally known, but they would seem to be very important to paper-makers.

T.I.

Pilgrims’ Road to Canterbury (Vol. ii., p. 199.).—­Your correspondent PHILO-CHAUCER, I presume, desires to know the old route to Canterbury.  I should imagine that at the time of Chaucer a great part of the country was uncultivated and uninclosed, and a horse-track in parts of the route was probably the nearest approximation to a road.  At the present day, crossing the London road at Wrotham, and skirting the base of the chalk hills, there is a narrow lane which I have heard called “the Pilgrims’ road,” and this, I suppose, is in fact the old Canterbury road; though how near to London or Canterbury it has a distinct existence, and to what extent it may have been absorbed in other roads, I am not able to say.  The title of “Pilgrims’ road” I take to be a piece of modern antiquarianism.  In the immediate vicinity of this portion there are some druidical remains:  some at Addington, and a portion of a small circle tolerably distinct in a field and lane between, I think, Trottescliffe and Ryarsh.  In the absence of better information, you may perhaps make use of this.

S.H.

Abbe Strickland (Vol. ii, p. 198.), of whom I.W.H. asks for information, is mentioned by Cox, in his Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, t. i. p. 442., and t. iii. p. 174.

D. ROCK.

Etymology of Totnes.—­The Query of J.M.B. (Vol. i., p 470.) not having been as yet answered, I venture to offer a few notes on the subject; and, mindful of your exhortation to brevity, compress my remarks into the smallest possible compass, though the details of research which might be indulged in, would call for a dissertation rather them a Note.