"Qua ratione inquis? Eadem qua conflagratio futura est ... Aqua et ignes terrenis dominantur. Ex his ortus et ex his interitus est," etc. There are also the Sybilline verses (quoted by Lactantias _de Ira Dei_, cap. xxiii.):-- "[Greek: Kai pote ten orgen theon ouk eti praunonta,] [Greek: All' exembrithonta, kai exoluonta te gennan] [Greek: Anthropon, hapasan hup' empresmou perthonta.]" Plato has a similar passage in his _Timaeus_; and many others are quoted by Matthew Pole in his _Synopsis Criticorum Script. Sacrae Interpretum_; on 2 Pet. iii. 6. 10.; to which I beg to refer MR. SANSOM; and also to Burnet's _Sacred Theory of the Earth_, book iii. ch. 3. T. H. KERSLEY. King William's College, Isle of Man. _Combs buried with the Dead_ (Vol. ii., pp. 230. 269.).--On reference to Sir Thomas Browne's _Hydriotaphia_, I find two passages which may supply the information your correspondent seeks as to the reason for combs being buried with human remains. In section i., pp. 26, 27. (I quote from the Edinburgh reprint of 1822, published by Blackwood) the author says: "In a field of Old Walsingham, not many months past (1658), were digged up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, not far from one another, not all strickly of one figure, but most answering these described; some containing two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jaws, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion, besides extraneous substances, like pieces of small boxes, or _combs_, handsomely wrought, handles of small brass instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some kind of opale." And again he says (pp. 36, 37.): "From exility of bones, thinness of skulls, smallness of teeth, ribs, and thigh-bones, not improbable that many thereof were persons of minor age, or women. Confirmable also from things contained in them. In most were found substances resembling _combs_, plates like boxes, fastened with iron pins, and handsomely overwrought like the necks or bridges of musical instruments, long brass plates overwrought like the handles of neat implements, _brazen nippers to pull away hair_, and in one a kind of opale, yet maintaining a bluish colour. "Now that they accustomed to burn or bury with them things wherein they excelled, delighted, or which were dear unto them, either as farewells unto all pleasure, or vain apprehension that they might use them in the other world, is testified by all antiquity." The instances which he appends relate only to the Pagan period, and he does not appear to have known that a similar practice prevailed in the sepulture of Christians--if, indeed, such a custom was general, and not confined to the particular case mentioned by your correspondent. J. H. P. LERESCHE. _The Norfolk Dialect_ (Vol. ii., p. 217.).--