various periods, taken by Mr. Franchi, and comprising two mirror-cases in the possession of Mr. Fountaine; also some choice specimens in the Museum of M. Sauvageot, at Paris. Amongst the latter is a folding tablet sculptured in hold relief, representing the Coronation of the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist. In the spandrels of each portion are introduced a flower and an escutcheon charged with a cross; and some French antiquaries, regarding these as the English rose and St. George's cross, had inclined to suppose the sculpture to be of English work.
By the Rev. Walter Sneyd.—Two remarkable bosses of gilt copper (diam. 412 in.) ornaments probably of a shrine or tomb, with an enamelled escutcheon in the centre of each, surrounded by open work formed of five dragons curiously interlaced. One of the escutcheons is charged with the bearing of Créquy; Or, a tree of seven branches, gules, called a Crequier by the French heralds, each branch terminating in a fruit like a small pine-cone. On the other escutcheon is the bearing of La Tremouille,—Or, a chevron between three leaves (?) azure. Date, XIIIth century. A small carving in ivory, portion of a coffer, representing three figures in high relief; the date, from the costume and design, may be as early as the IVth or Vth century. A carving in ivory, of rude execution, representing the Saviour enthroned; part of a coffer, probably of North German work, of Xth or XIth century. A carved mirror-case of ivory, XIVth century, representing a hawking party on horseback. A small silver pendant ornament, representing the crucifix between the Virgin and St. John; it has a little ring above and below, and was possibly intended to be attached to a rosary. Date XVth century. A small piece of carved mother o'pearl, in open work, representing the Entombment of our Lord. Date XVth century. Early European work in this material is very rare.
By Mr. W. J. Bernhard Smith.—A collection of tobacco-pipes, showing the progress of the manufacture and the forms of the bowl from the earliest period of their use in England. These specimens had been chiefly obtained in Surrey, Middlesex, Staffordshire, and Shropshire; the manufacture having been chiefly practised, probably, in the county last mentioned, at the little town of Brosely, whence the popular name of "a brosely" for a tobacco-pipe, in various parts of England, as stated by Mr. Hartshorne in his "Salopia Antiqua," p. 338. He observes that the diminutive bowls turned up by the spade or the plough are called in Shropshire "Fairishes pipes," as also in the North of England, according to Brockett.[1] They are so termed, also, in Ireland, where they are often found, and have sometimes been assigned to a remote period, under the supposition even that they may have been brought by the Danish marauders of the Xth century. Mr. Crofton Croker has refuted this absurd notion, and gives representations of several examples in his collection from the times of Elizabeth to the reign of William III. (" Dublin Penny Journal," vol. iv. p. 28.) In Scotland they are known as Celtic or Elfin Pipes. The occasional juxta-position of these reliques with objects of more remote antiquity, has, indeed, occasionally given an appearance of probability to the supposition that they may be more ancient than the introduction of tobacco in the reign of Elizabeth; thus the talented Historian of the Roman Wall seems reluctant to recognise
- ↑ See his "Glossary of North Country Words," v. Fairy Pipes. He cites a curious memoir on the subject of the discovery of such pipes near entrenchments, &c. in Ireland, in the "Anthologia Hibernica," for May, 1793.
