126
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
Early English date, and was originally in Pattiswick Church,
from which it was removed, and for some time used as a horse-
trough, and afterwards as a flower stand in the garden of Mr.
William Mayhew, who gave it to Mr. Dampier (Vicar) in 1841,
by whom it was set upon new pillars and completely restored,
and presented to the Church in 1852. It was temporarily fixed
in the south chancel aisle, but afterwards removed to the
position it now occupies in the nave. In 1871, the shafts which
support the basin were reduced a few inches in height, and the
brick steps were replaced by a stone base. In the earlier History
of Coggeshall by Bryan Dale the above is also referred to.
It will be noted that the history of the font does not seem to
point to its having been sculptured by the same person who ex-
ecuted the other work in Coggeshall Church, and, if of the same
age and contemporary with the building of the Church, is it
possible that Pattiswick Church was built about the same date ?
— Edwin E. Turner, Grange Hill, Coggeshall.
Storing Grain Underground in South Africa.—In The
Essential Kafir, by Mr. Dudley Kidd (London, A. and C. Black,
1904), the writer, when treating of "Arts of Peace and Domestic
Matters," mentions (p. 325) that the "Mealies" (Indian Corn)
"are stripped from the cob and placed in the mealie pits, which
are excavations in the ground of the cattle kraal. The fluids
from the cattle kraal percolate into the ground and turn the grain
sour, which prevents the weevil from attacking it. The flavour
of mealies taken from one of the pits is too disgusting for words;
yet the natives like it. Sometimes the grain is stored in large
huts either inside or just outside the kraal."
Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell, in his paper on Deneholes (Archaeo-
logical Journal, 1882), notes the discovery by H. M. Stanley of
curious underground dwellings in equatorial Africa. But some
of these Kafir grain-pits must be 30 degrees or more south of the
equator. It is also interesting to find that grain-pits of so
primitive a kind are used by people who are also in the habit of
storing grain in large huts. The comparative abundance locally
of the weevil probably decides the form taken by the granary.
—T. V. H.
Grain Stored in Pits in Morocco.—"It is said that the
mountain tribes are accumulating considerable stores of corn,
which are buried in clay-lined pits in districts well removed from