ed themselves more to
English field flowers, the far more worthy and intellectual of the two.

We could add a "Note" here and there on some points arising out of this
question; but our want of definite and complete information, and of the
means of gaining it (except through you), compels us to leave the subject
to others, better qualified for its discussion. Pray, sir, open your pages
to the question, and oblige, your ever obedient servants,

PEN-AND-INK.

Hill Top, May 27, 1850.

* * * * *

ASINORUM SEPULTURA.

In former times it was the practice, upon the demise of those who died
under sentence of excommunication, not merely to refuse interment to their
bodies in consecrated ground, but to decline giving them any species of
interment at all. The corpse was placed upon the surface of the earth, and
there surrounded and covered over with stones. It was _blocked up_,
"imblocatus," and this mode of disposing of dead bodies was designated
"_Asinorum Sepultura._" Ducange gives more than one instance, viz.,
"Sepultura asini sepeliantur"--"ejusque corpus exanime asinorum accipiat
sepulturam."

Wherefore was this mode of disposing of the dead bodies called "an ass's
sepulture?" It is not sufficient to say that the body of a human being was
buried like that of a beast, for then the term would be general and not
particular; neither can I imagine that Christian writers used the phrase
for the purpose of repudiating the accusation preferred against them by
Pagans, of worshipping an ass. (See Baronius, ad. an. 201. Sec.21.) The dead
carcasses{9} of dogs and hounds were sometimes attached to the bodies of
criminals. (See Grinds, _Deutsche Rechte Alterthum_, pp. 685, 686.) I refer
to this to show that there must have been some special reason for the term
"_asinorum sepultura_". That reason I would wish to have explained; Ducange
does not give it, he merely tells what was the practice; and the attention
of Grimm, it is plain, from his explanation of the "unehrliches begraebnis"
(pp. 726, 727, 728.), was not directed towards it.

W.B. MACCABE.

* * * * *

+Minor Queries.+

_Ransom of an English Nobleman_.--At page 28. vol. ii. of the _Secret
History of the Court of James I._, Edinburgh, 1811 (a reprint), occurs the
following:--

"Nay, to how lowe an ebbe of honor was this our poore despicable
kingdome brought, that (even in Queen Elizabeth's time, the