word "dementat" is not to be met with, I believe, in the works of
any real classical author. Butler has employed the idea in part 3. canto
2. line 565. of _Hudibras_:

"Like men condemned to thunderbolts,
Who, ere the blow, become mere dolts."

C.I.R.

_Shrew_ (No. 24. p. 381.).--The word, I apprehend, means sharp. The
mouse, which is not the field-mouse, as Halliwell states, but an animal
of a different order of quadrupeds, has a very sharp snout. Shrewd means
sharp generally. Its bad sense is only incidental. They seem connected
with scratch; screw; shrags, the end of sticks or furze (Halliwell); to
shred (A.-S., screadan, but which must be a secondary form of the verb).
That the shrew-mouse is called in Latin _sorex_, seems to be an
accidental coincidence. That is said to be derived from [Greek: urax].
The French have confounded the two, and give the name _souris_ to the
common mouse, but _not_ to the shrew-mouse.

I protest, for one, against admitting that Broc is derived from _broc_,
persecution, which of course is participle from break. We say "to
badger" for to annoy, to teaze. I suppose two centuries hence will think
the name of the animal is derived from that verb, and not the verb from
it. It means also, in A.-S., _equus vilis_, a horse that is worn out or
"broken down."

C.B.

_Zenobia_ (No. 24. p. 383.).--Zenobia is said to be "gente Judaea," in
Hoffman's _Lexicon Universale_, and Facciolati, ed. Bailey, Appendix,
voc. _Zenobia_.

M.
Oxford.

_Cromwell's Estates_ (No. 24. p. 389.).--There is Woolaston, in
Gloucestershire, four miles from Chepstow, chiefly belonging now to the
Duke of Beaufort.

C.B.

_Vox et praeterea Nihil_ (No. 16. p. 247., and No. 24. p. 387.).--This
saying is to be found in Plutarch's _Laconic Apophthegms_ ([Greek:
Apophthegmata Lakonika]), Plutarchi _Opera Moralia_, ed. Dan.
Wyttenbach, vol. i. p. 649.

Philemon Holland has "turned it into English" thus:--

"Another [Laconian] having plucked all the feathers off from a
nightingale, and seeing what a little body it had: 'Surely,'
quoth he, 'thou art all voice, and nothing else.'"--_Plutarch's
Morals_, fol. 1603. p. 470.

W.B.R.

_Law of Horses._--The following is from Oliphant's _Law of Horses, &c._,
p. 75. Will any of your readers kindly tell me whether the view is
correct?

"It is said in _Southerene_ v. _Howe_ (2 Rol. Rep. 5.), _Si home
vend chivall que est lame, null acti