of the employment of a word very old in our language, and in use in the
best periods of our prose and poetry: "apostata" is explained in the
_Promptorium_, is found in Skelton and Heywood, and so down to the time
of Massinger, who was especially fond of it.

How many copies were issued of Smeeton's reprint of _The Pardoner and
the Frere_, I know not; but any of your readers, who chance to possess
it, will do well to add the absent line in the margin, so that the
mistake may be both rectified and recorded. I was not aware of Mr.
Child's intention to re-publish the interlude in the United States, or I
would long ago have sent him the correction, as indeed I did, a day or
two after I received his volume. It was, nevertheless, somewhat
ungracious to thank him for his book, and at the same time to point out
an important error in it, for which, however, he was in no way
responsible.

J. PAYNE COLLIER.

Kensington, Jan. 28. 1850.

* * * * *

CATACOMBS AND BONE-HOUSES.

Without attempting to answer the queries of MR. GATTY, (No. 11. p. 171.)
I venture to send a note on the subject. I believe it will generally be
found that the local tradition makes such collections of bones to be
"the grisly gleanings of some battlefield." One of the most noteworthy
collections of this kind that I have seen is contained in the crypt of
Hythe Church, Kent, where a vast quantity of bones are piled up with