ere, and
at what price, a copy of the first _American_ edition of the _Book of
Mormon_ can be procured.

W. SPARROW SIMPSON, B.A.

14. Grove Road,
North Brixton, Surrey.

* * * * *

MINOR QUERIES.

_Dimidiation._--Is the practice of _dimidiation_ approved of by modern
heralds, and are examples of it common?

W. FRASER.

Tor-Mohun.

_Early Christian Mothers._--Can any of your correspondents inform me
whether the Christian mothers of the first four or five centuries were much
in the habit of using the rod in correcting their children; and whether the
influence acquired by the mother of St. Chrysostom, and others of the same
stamp, was not greatly owing to their having seldom or never inflicted
corporal punishment on them?

PATER.

_The Lion at Northumberland House._--One often hears the anecdote of a wag
who, as alleged, stared at the lion on Northumberland House until he had
collected a crowd of imitators around him, when he cried out, "By Heaven!
it wags, it wags," and the rest agreed with him that the lion did wag its
tail. If this farce really took place, I should be glad to know the date
and details.

J. P.

Birmingham.

_The Cross in Mexico and Alexandria._--In _The Unseen World; Communications
with it, real and imaginary, &c._, 1850, a work which is attributed to an
eminent divine and ecclesiastical historian of the English Church, it is
stated that--

"It was a tradition in Mexico, before the arrival of the Spaniards,
that when that form (the sign of the cross) should be victorious, the
old religion should disappear. The same sign is also said to have been
{549} discovered on the destruction of the temple of Serapis at
Alexandria, and the same tradition to have been attached to it."--P.
23.

The subject is very curious, and one in which I am much interested. I am
anxious to refer to the original authorities for the tradition in both
cases. It is known that the Mexicans worshipped the cross as the god of
rain. We have the following curious account thereof in _The Pleasant
Historie of the Conquest of West India, now called Newe Spayne_, translated
out of the Spanish tongue by T. N., anno 1578:

"At the foote of this temple was a plotte like a churchyard, well
walled and garnished with proper pinnacles; in the midst whereof stoode
a crosse of ten foote long, the which they adored for god of the rayne;
for at all ti