These lines are the forenoon portion of Martial's well-known distribution of hours and occupation. Taking these hours then, for the sake of simplification, at the equinox, when they assimilate in length to our modern hours and assuming it as granted that "_quies lassis_" refers to the noon-tide siesta, and therefore that "_sexta_" cannot signify any time previous to our twelve o'clock, or noon, I wish to ask the classical readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES"-- 1st. How far into the day are we carried by the expression "_in quintam_?" 2nd. If no farther than to a point equivalent to our eleven o'clock, A.M., in what way is the vacant hour between that point and _sexta_, or noon, accounted for by Martial? A. E. B. Leeds. 214. _Moonlight._--A sermon of Dr. Pusey's contains the following beautiful illustrations of the danger of much knowledge and little practice: "The pale cold light of the moon, which enlightens but warns not, putrifies what it falls upon." Will any one inform me whether this is a physical truth, or only an allowable use of a popular opinion? PHILIP HEDGELAND. 215. _Ash-sap given to new-born Children._--Lightfoot, in his _Flora Scotia_, vol. ii. p. 642., says-- "That in many parts of Scotland (the Highlands), at the birth of a child the nurse or midwife puts one end of a great stick of the ash-tree into the fire, and while it is burning receives into a spoon the sap or juice which oozes out at the other end, and administers this as the first spoonfuls of liquor to the new-born babe."--Phillip's _Sylva Flora_. Why? G. CREED. 216. _Cockney._--In John Minshieu's _Ductor in Linguas_, published in 1617, the origin of this word is thus explained:-- "That a citizen's son riding with his father out of London into the country, and being a novice and merely ignorant how corn and cattle increased, asked, when he heard a horse neigh, what the horse did? His father answered, the horse doth neigh. Riding further he heard a cock crow, and said, doth the _cock neigh_ too?" I should not have troubled you with this story had I not been anxious to ascertain the real origin of the word "Cockney," about which Johnson seems to have been nearly as much in the dark as I am. For any other and more rational explanation I shall be much obliged, as well as by being informed from what source Minshieu derived this story of a cock and a horse, which I am confident I have met with elsewhere, and which is probably familiar to many of your readers. H. C. Workington.