This has long been a puzzle to the Hull antiquaries. I have often inquired of old persons likely to know the origin of such names of places at that sea-port as "The Land of Green Ginger," "Pig Alley," "Mucky-south-end," and "Rotten Herring Staith;" and I have come to the conclusion, that "The Land of Green Ginger" was a very dirty place where horses were kept: a mews, in short, which none of the Muses, not even with Homer as an exponent, could exalt ([Greek: Epea pteroenta en athanatoisi theoisi]) into the regions of poesy.
Ginger has been cultivated in this country as a _stove_ exotic for about two hundred and fifty years. In one of the histories of Hull, ginger is supposed to have grown in this street, where, to a recent period, the stables of the George Inn, and those of a person named Foster opposite, occupied the principal portion of the short lane called "Land of Green Ginger." It is hardly possible that the true zingiber can have grown here, even in the manure heaps; but a plant of the same order (_Zingiberaceæ_) may have been mistaken for it. Some of the old women or marine school-boys of the Trinity House, in the adjoining lane named from that guild, or some druggist, may have dropped, either accidentally or experimentally, a root, if not of the ginger, yet of some kindred plant. The magnificent _Fuchsia_ was first noticed in the possession of a seaman's wife by Fuchs in 1501, a century prior to the introduction of the ginger plant into England.
_Stereoscopic Angles_.--The discussion in "N. & Q." relative to the best angle for stereoscopic pictures has gone far towards a satisfactory conclusion: there are, however, still a few points which may be beneficially considered.
In the first place, the kind of stereoscope to be used must tend to modify the mental impression; and secondly, the _amount_ of reduction from the size of the original has a considerable influence on the final result.
If in viewing a stereoscopic pair of photographs, they are placed _at the same distance_ from the eyes as the _length of the focus of the lens used in producing them_, then without doubt the distance between the eyes, viz. about two and a quarter { 228} inches, is the best difference between the two points of view to produce a perfectly natural result; and if the points of operation be more distant from one another, as I have before intimated, an effect is produced similar to what would be the case if the pictures were taken from a _model_ of the object instead of the object itself.