furnished America with inhabitants, seem to have hit the true
opinion; you cannot believe how great the resemblance of the
Indian manners is to those of the ancient Scythians; it is found
in their religious ceremonies, their customs, and in their food.
Hornius is full of characteristics that may satisfy your
curiosity in this respect, and I desire you to read him."--Vol.
i. p. 400.

But the subject of the "Origines Americanæ" is not what I now beg to
propose for consideration; it is the tradition-falsifying assertion of
Mr. Grenville Pigott, in his _Manual of Scandinavian Mythology_ (as
quoted by D'Israeli in the _Amenities of English Literature_, vol. i. p.
51, 52.), that the custom with which the Scandinavians were long
reproached, of drinking out of the skulls of their enemies, has no other
foundation than a blunder of Olaus Wormius, who, translating a passage
in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog,--

"Soon shall we drink out of the curved trees of the head,"

turned the trees of the head into a skull, and the skull into a hollow
cup; whilst the Scald merely alluded to the branching horns, growing as
trees from the heads of aninals, that is, the curved horns which formed
their drinking cups.

T.J.


_Cromwell's Estates.--Magor_ (Vol. ii., p. 126.).--I have at length
procured the following information respecting _Magor_. It is a parish in
the lower division of the hundred of Caldicot, Monmouthshire. Its