The monkish cook--like a cook of the present day--would, probably, skin and cut off the tail of the thornback, when he cooked him for the monks’ dinner, and then he would probably throw both skin and tail, spines and all, into the rubbish-hole outside the kitchen; there they would remain till removed. And, next, when did this removal take place? A curious book--Collectanea Curiosa--published at Oxford in seventeen hundred and eighty-one, tells us. In this book there is an article entitled, “Out of the journal book of the expences of all the buildings of Christ Church College, Oxon, which I had of Mr. Pore, of Blechinton.” The second item runs thus: “Spent about the femerell of the new kitchen and sundry gutters pertaining to the same, xviijs. viijd.” Further on we find, “Paid to Thomas Hewister, for carriage of earth and rubble from the fayre gate, and the new stepull to fill the ditches, on the backside of the college, clvj. loads, at a peny the load by computation, xiijs.” Again: “Paid to Mr. David Griffith, Priest, for his stipend for wages, as well for keeping of the monastery of St. Frideswide, and saying of Divine service after the suppression of the same unto the first stalling of the dean and canons in the said college, as for his labours in overseeing the workmen dayly labouring there in all by the space of thirteen months, vij £.” From this evidence it will appear that for a considerable space of time (probably about five years) many alterations were made, and much earth removed from place to place. The cathedral, and, in fact, nearly all the quadrangle--as will appear by comparing their levels with that of the street outside--stand upon made ground. It is probable, therefore, that some of the earth from outside the monkish kitchen, or other rubbish hole, was carted to form the floor of the cathedral, and with it, of course, any rubbish that happened to be there. This, then, was the fate of our thornback’s spine. The thornback was eaten by the monks of St. Frideswide, the spine thrown away, unheeded, unregarded, to be disinterred, after the lapse of more than three hundred years, at the funeral of a college dean, and finally to be honoured by having its history recorded in Household Words. LITTLE SAINT ZITA.