Force exitnode oddness

[Geoff Down]

Hi,
  I'm trying to force the use of an exit node in France to view a site 
using .exit in the URL.
I get a 404 page with the exitnode in the error message:
"The requested URL /Images/.../ was not found on this server.
Apache/2.0.54 (Unix) PHP/4.4.0 Server at <site>.<node>.exit Port 80"
  This is the right Server identifier - I am getting through to the site 
but the hostname is being rejected because it contains the .<node>.exit 
.
Presumably that should have been stripped by my Tor client or the exit 
node.
I'm using Tor 0.1.2.19 OSX10.3.9
  On a related note, does using the .<node>.exit notation affect the 
domain that cookies are stored under?

Thanks,
downie