ge's.

B.

* * * * *

_Emerods_ (No. 18. p. 282.) pro _haemorrhoids_. "Golden emerods" would
be an absurdity if _emerod_ meant "emerald." "The Philistines made
golden emerods," i.e. golden images of haemorrhoids (diseased veins),
in commemoration of being delivered from plagues, of which such states
of disease were concomitant signs.

TREBOR.

* * * * *

_Military Execution_ (No. 16. p. 246.).--Your correspondent "MELANION"
is informed that the anecdote refers to Murat, and the author of the
sentiment is Lord Byron. See _Byron's Poems_, Murray's edit. 1 vol.
8vo. p. 561., note 4.

C.

* * * * *

"_M. or N._" (No. 26. p. 415.)--I do not think that "M. or N." are
used as the initials of any particular words; they are the middle
letters of the alphabet, and, at the time the Prayer Book was
compiled, it seems to have been the fashion to employ them in the way
in which we now use the first two. There are only two offices, the
Catechism and the Solemnisation of Matrimony, in which more than one
letter is used. In the former, the answer to the first question has
always stood "N. or M." In the office of Matrimony, however, in Edward
the Sixth's Prayer Books, both the man and woman are designated by
the letter N--"I, N., take thee, N., to my wedded wife;" whilst in
our present book M. is applied to the man and N. to the woman. The
adoption of one letter, and the subsequent substitution of another, in
this service, evidently for the sake of a more clear distinction only,
sufficiently shows that no particular name or word was intended by
either. Possibly some future "J.C." may inquire of what words the
letters "A.B.," which our legislators are so fond of using in their
Acts of Parliament, are the initials.

ARUN.

* * * * *

"_M. or N._" (No. 26, p. 415.).--"M." and "N.," and particularly "N.,"
are still in frequent use in France for _quidam_ or _quaedam_; so also
is X. We read every day of Monsieur N. or Madame X., where they wish
to suppress the name.

C.

* * * * *

_Sapcote Motto_ (No. 23. p. 366.).--This motto is known to be French,
and as far as it can be decyphered is--

"sco toot X vinic [or umic]
X pones,"

the first and last letters _s_ being possibly flourishes. This
certainly seems unpromising enough. The name being Sapcote, _quasi_
Sub