an give no particulars of dress,
&c., which might help to determine its age; nor could my informant, though
he perfectly well remembered the subject represented. He told me that he
had often mentioned it to people likely to know of the existence of such a
legend, but could never gain any information respecting it.

C. J. E.

King's Col. Cambridge, May 9. 1851.

_King of Nineveh burns himself in his Palace_.--In a review of Mr. Layard's
work on Nineveh (_Quarterly_, vol. lxxxiv. p. 140.) I find the following
statement:

"The act of Sardanapalus in making his palace his own funeral pyre and
burning himself upon it, is also attributed to the king who was
overthrown by Cyaxares."

May I ask where the authority for this statement is to be found?

X. Z.

_Butchers not Jurymen_.--

"As the law does think it fit
No butchers shall on juries sit."--Butler's _Ghost_, cant. ii.

The vulgar error expressed in these lines is not extinct, even at the
present day. The only explanation I have seen of its origin is given in
Barrington's _Observations on the more Ancient Statutes_, p. 474., on 3
Hen. VIII., where, after referring in the text to a statute by which
surgeons were exempted from attendance on juries, he adds in a note:

"It may perhaps be thought singular to suppose that this exemption from
serving on juries is the foundation of the vulgar error, that a surgeon
or butcher from the barbarity of their business may be challenged as
jurors."

Sir H. Spelman, in his _Answer to an Apology for Archbishop Abbott_,
says,--

"In our law, those that were exercised in slaughter of beasts, were not
received to be triers of the life of a man."--_Posth. Works_, p. 112.;
_St. Trials_, vol. ii. p. 1171.

So learned a man as Spelman must, I think, have had some ground for this
statement, and could scarcely be repeating a vulgar error taking its rise
from a statute then hardly more than a hundred years old. I hope some of
your readers will be able to give a more satisfactory explanation than
Barrington's.

E. S. T. T.

_Redwing's Nest_.--I trust you will excuse my asking, if any of your
correspondents have found the nest of the redwing? for I lately discovered
what I consider as the egg of this bird in a nest containing four
blackbirds' eggs. The egg answers exactly the description given of that of
the redwing thrush, both in Bewick and Wood's _British Song Birds;_ being
bluish-gre