e dead bodies of inferior or unclean
animals (of which the dog was a more common type) under any rubbish
beyond the precincts of the city, may have been intended, by specifying
this animal in prescribing an ignominious sepulture.

LAMBA.

It can hardly have escaped the notice of your Querist (although the
instance is not one adduced by Ducange), that the phrase, "burial of an
ass" #Kevurat Chamor# for "no burial at all," is as old as the time of
the prophet Jeremiah. (Vide chap. xxii. 19.) The _custom_ referred to
being of religious origin, might lead us to the sacred books for the
origin of the _phrase_ denoting it; and it seems natural for the
Christian writers, in any mention of those whose bodies, like that of
Jehoiakim, were for their sins deprived of the rites of sepulture, to
use the striking phrase already provided for them in Scripture; and as
natural for that phrase to continue in use even after the somewhat more
civilised custom of "imblocation" had deprived it of its original
reference to "the dead body's being cast out in the day to the heat, and
in the night to the frost." (Jer. xxxvi. 30.)

J. EASTWOOD.

This phrase is, I think, accounted for by the ass being deprived of
interment in consequence of the uses made of its dead carcass. After a
description of the adaptation of his bones to instrumental music,
Aldrovandus continues as follows:--

"De corio notissimum, post obitum, ne quid asini unquam {42}
_conquiescat_, foraminibus delacerari, indeque factis cribris,
assiduae inservire agitationi; unde dicebat Apuleius: cedentes
hinc inde miserum corium, nec cribris jam idoneum relinquunt.
Sed et Albertus pollicetur asinorum corium non solum utile esse
ad soleas calceorum faciendas, sed etiam quae ex illa parte
fiunt, in qua onera fuerunt, non consumi, etsi ille qui utitur,
eis continuo peregrinando in lapidibus portaverit, et tandem ita
indurare ut pedes sustinere nequeant."--_De Quadruped._, p. 351.

T. J.

* * * * *

POPE FELIX.

Four Popes of the name have filled the chair of St. Peter.

The first suffered martyrdom under Aurelian. He is honoured with a
festival at Rome on the 29th May.

The second also received the crown of martyrdom, under Constantine. His
festival is kept on the 29th July.

The third is commemorated as a holy confessor on the 25th February. He
was a collateral ancestor of Pope St. G