Can any of your correspondents refer me to the circumstance in question?

C. CLIFTON BARRY.

_Animal Prefixes, descriptive of Size and Quality._--Will somebody oblige
me by pointing out in the modern languages any analogous instances to the
Greek [Greek: bon], English _horse_-radish, _dog_-rose, _bull_-finch, &c.?

C. CLIFTON BARRY.

_Punning Devices._--Sir John Cullum, in his _Hist. of Hawsted_, 1st edit.
p. 114., says that the seal of Sir William Clopton, knight, t. Hen. VII.,
was "a ton, out of which issues some plant, perhaps a _caltrop_, which
might be contracted to the first syllable of his name." This appears to be
too violent a contraction. Can any of your readers suggest any other or
closer analogy between the name and device?

BURIENSIS.

"_Pinece with a stink._"--In Archbishop Bramhall's _Schism Guarded_
(written against Serjeant) there is a passage in which the above curious
expression occurs, and of which I can find no satisfactory, nor indeed any
explanation whatever. The passage is this (_Works_, vol. ii. p. 545., edit.
Ox.):

"But when he is baffled in the cause, he hath a reserve,--that
Venerable Bede, and Gildas, and Foxe in his Acts and Monuments, do
brand the Britons for wicked men, making them 'as good as Atheists; of
which gang if this Dinoth were one,' he 'will neither wish the Pope
such friends, nor envy them to the Protestants.'

"What needeth this, when he hath got the worst of the cause, to defend
himself like a _pinece with a stink_? We read no other character of
Dinoth, but as of a pious, learned, and prudent man."

Can any of your readers furnish an explanation?

R. BLAKISTON.

_Soiled Parchment Deeds._--Having in my possession some old and very dirty
parchment deeds, and other records, now almost illegible from the
accumulation of grease, &c., on the surface of the skins, I am desirous to
know if there be any "royal road" to the cleansing and restoration of these
otherwise enduring MSS.?

T. HUGHES.

Chester.

_Roger Wilbraham, Esq.'s Cheshire Collection._--Can any of your
correspondents say where the original collection made by the above-named
gentleman, or a copy of them, referred to in Dr. Foote Gower's _Sketch of
the Materials for a Cheshire History_, may now be met with?

CESTRIENSIS.

_Cambridge and Ireland._--In the first volume of the _Pictorial History of
England_, p. 270., it is stated that--

"Martin skins are mentioned