_"Dimidiation" in Impalements_ (Vol. vii., p. 548.).--In reply to your correspondent's Query as to _dimidiation_, he will find that this was the most ancient form of impalement. Its manifest inconvenience no doubt at last banished it. Guillim (ed. 1724) says, at p. 425.: "It was an ancient way of impaling, to take half the husband's coat, and with that to joyn as much of the wife's; as appeareth in an old roll, wherein three lions, being the arms of _England_, are dimidiated and impaled with half the pales of Arragon. The like hath been practised with quartered coats by leaving out half of them." On p. 426. he gives the example of Mary, Henry VIII.'s sister, and her husband Louis XII. of France. Here the French king's coat is cut in half, so that the lily in the base point is _dimidiated_; and the queen's coat, being quarterly France and England, shows two quarters only; England in chief, France in base. Sandford, in his _Genealogical History_, gives a plate of the tomb of Henry II. and Richard I. of England at Fontevrault, which was built anew in {630} 1638. Upon it are several impalements by _dimidiation_. Sandford (whose book seems to me to be strangely over-valued) gives no explanation of them. No doubt they were copied from the original tomb. In Part II. of the _Guide to the Architectural Antiquities in the Neighbourhood of Oxford_, at p. 178., is figured an impalement by _dimidiation_ existing at Stanton Harcourt, in the north transept of the church, in a brass on a piece of blue marble. The writer of the _Guide_ supposes this bearing to be some union of Harcourt and Beke, in consequence of a will of John Lord Beke, and to be commemorative of the son of Sir Richard Harcourt and Margaret Beke. It is in fact commemorative of those persons themselves. Harcourt, two bars, is dimidiated, and meets Beke, a cross moline or ancree. The figure thus produced is a strange one, but perfectly intelligible when the practice of impaling by dimidiation is recollected. I know no modern instance of this method of impaling. I doubt if any can be found since the time of Henry VIII. D. P. Begbrook. _Worth_ (Vol. vii., p. 584.).--At one time, and in one locality, this word seems to have denoted manure; as appears by the following preamble to the statute 7 Jac. I. cap. 18.: "Whereas the sea-sand, by long triall and experience, hath bin found to be very profitable for the bettering of land, and especially for the increase of corne and tillage, within the counties of Devon and Cornwall, where the inhabitants have not commonly used any other _worth_, for the bettering of their arable grounds and pastures." I am not aware of any other instance of the use of this word in this sense. C. H. COOPER. Cambridge.