opening the box there issued out a stench so abominable that it was not to be borne, and the whole Chapel was infected with it. The bishop ordered that the relicaries should be taken out in order that he might carefully examine the cause of so strange an accident; this was done, and they soon. discovered the mystery, for they found a case from which this pestilential odour proceeded; there was in it a piece of cloth with this inscription, "Relics of Martin Luther's Breeches,"..which the Lutheran preachers in mockery of our piety, had placed among the sacred relics. These abominable remains of the Heresiarch were burnt by command of the bishop, and then not only did the stink cease, but there issued from the sacred relics a most sweet perfume, which filled the whole chapel."

This story is certainly ben trovato. If the authenticity of the relic had not been established beyond all controversy

by its odour of heresy, no Catholic would have raised a doubt concerning it, founded upon the nature of the thing preserved: for though the Romanists have not gone quite so far as the Priests of Thibet in preparing pastils of Zibethum occidentale from their human idols, they have exceeded them in indecency. The relic of which Antwerp boasted, quod tamen sub annum 1566, templis ac sacrariis immani Calvinistarum furore direptis, deperditum est, is one at which I can only hint. It is the subject of the first article in the Acta Sanctorum, and the manner in which its existence on earth may be reconciled with the fact of the Resurrection of Christ is there explained, according to the opinion of Suarez,.. but the question had often been discussed before, de quo consuli possunt Titus Bostrensis et Theophilactus et alii Interpretes et Doctores!

217. Anguinum.

Thunberg speaks of a mountain, or rather a large single rock in the Cape Colony called Slangenkop, which signifies Serpent's Head. On one side of it is a large and deep crevice, which makes this rock remarkable, for every autumn almost all the serpents of the neighbourhood creep into it and assemble together, in order to remain there secure and unmolested during their torpid state. Towards summer, when the heat begins to set in, serpents of many different kinds, and frequently coiled up together in large knots, are seen coming out from this hole, who spread themselves afterwards over the country, and finding proper food soon recover the flesh which they have lost during their retreat.

This mention of their being coiled together in large knots reminds me of Pliny, and the fable which the Druids grafted upon this as yet unexplained habit of the serpent, for that it is a

habit seems to be proved by the foregoingpassage, and by the following extract from one of our newspapers, of the year 1810.

"Friday last, some boys at play near the Hoop public house, on Hampstead Heath, discovered a number of large adders wreathed together in a knot, and basking in the sun shine under a hedge. The boys attacked them with stones, and the reptiles quickly disentwined themselves, and made battle for some time, by hissing at their assailants; one, more bold than the rest, advanced towards one of the boys, who fortunately killed it with a stone; it measured above four feet in length, and had several frogs in its belly."

218. Mistranslations.

A curious collection might be made. of the mistranslations in our language, not those which have grown out of an idiomatic expression, like La derniere chemise de l'amour, for love's last shift,.

but those which have proceeded from the ignorance of the translator. Thevenot in his Travels speaks of the fables of Damné et Calilve, meaning the Heetopades, or Pilpay's fables. The translator, however, calls them the fables of damned Calilve. In the compilation from the Mercurio Peruano, which was published some years ago, under the title of The Present State of Peru, P. Geronymo Roman de la Higuera, a name but too well known in Spanish literature, is translated, Father Geronymo, a Romance of La Higuera. There is another such instance in the Appendix to Mr. Pinkerton's Geography, but whether it rests with him or M. Barbié du Bocage, I know not. The Memoir speaks of "Don Michael de Sylva, Bishop of Viseu, Secretary of La Pureté, favourite of the King of Portugal." The Bishop was Escrivam de poridade, that is, confidential secretary, by which