_Dog's Head in the Pot_ (Vol. iii., p. 264.).--I have seen this carved and gilt as the sign of R. O. Backwell, ironmonger, Devonport. A person now sitting by me recollects its being adopted there about forty years since. It is perhaps always the sign of an ironmonger, instead of a public-house, as suggested by your correspondent. The pot (as at Blackfriars) is the three-legged cast-iron vessel called in Devonshire a "crock." K. TH. _Pope Joan_ (Vol. iii., p. 265.).--If the man who believes in this fable can be found in England, he will meet with the demonstration of its falsehood in the cotemporary chronicles of Galindo, Bishop of Troyes, otherwise called by his assumed name of religion, Prudentius Trecensis, or Trecassensis. (See _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_, Hanover, 1826, vol. i. p. 449.) It there appears clearly that no Pope John VIII. succeeded Leo IV., or preceded Benedict III. Prudentius survived them _both_ by three years. His words are "Mense Augusto Leo apostolicæ sedis antistes defunctus est, eique Benedictus successit. Eodem mense duæ stellæ majoris et minoris quantitatis visæ sunt," &c. &c. It seems to me that a just blindness fell upon men so evil-minded as to desire the falsification of chronology and history for polemical ends, that they should have utterly missed the moral principle by which they would be thought animated. No prelate ordaining a young person, unknown to himself, save by academical reputation, could _know_ that person's sex. The want of beard is no criterion; nor is the female lip in all instances very smooth. But if it were true that a person eminently distinguished by studies, and bringing from Athens a high reputation for merit, could upon those grounds alone obtain the suffrages of the Roman chapter, more honour would be conferred upon it than that chapter, or other dispensers of patronage, have usually merited. Instead of being unknown, the candidates in the days of Benedict III. were, if anything, _too well known_; for the jobbery and faction, of which this fable would indicate the entire, and almost unnatural, absence, were sufficiently at work. A. N. _"Nettle in dock out"_ (Vol. iii., p. 205.).--Bishop Andrewes uses the phrase, "_in_ docke _out_ nettle, _in_ nettle _out_ docke," to denote unsteadiness. The passage occurs in Sermon I., "Of the Resurrection," folio, p. 391.: "Now then that we bee not, all our life long, thus off and on, fast or loose, _in docke out nettle, and in nettle out docke_; it will behove us once more yet to looke back," &c. &c. &c. REVERT. Wittingham, Easter Eve.