form many Anglo-Saxon words which
never found their way into English proper.''
The blunder was not discovered, and
another correspondent wrote: ``The word
andwar would surely modernise into
_hand-

war_. Is not andirons (handirons) a
parallel word of the same genus?' In
the General Index we find ``Andwar, an
old English word.'' So much for the long
life of a very small blunder.

A very similar blunder to this of
``andwar'' occurs in _Select Remains of the
learned John Ray with his Life by the late
William Derham_, which was published
in 1760 with a dedication to the Earl of
Macclesfield, President of the Royal
Society, signed by George Scott. In
Derham's Life of Ray a list of books
read by Ray in 1667 is printed from
a letter to Dr. Lister, and one of these
is printed ``The Business about great
Rakes.'' Mr. Scott must have been
puzzled with this title; but he was
evidently a man not to be daunted by a
difficulty, for he added a note to this
effect: ``They are now come into general
use among the farmers, and are called
_drag rakes_.'' Who would suspect after
this that the title is merely a misprint,