the seal of Isabel, Countess of Gloucester, first wife of King John (Gent. Mag., Dec. 1840, p. 602.) 2. Gourd-shaped bottle of brown earth, similar to one given in the Journal (v, 28), which may be compared with the vessel held by the grotesque figure in vol. i, 144, there stated to belong to the close of the fifteenth century. 3. Drinking pot with loop. handle at the side, of buff coloured paste covered with the reddish-brown glaze so greatly used in the seventeenth century. 4. Portion of a large circular dish of delft ware, the inside painted in blue on a white field, the outside covered with yellow glaze: date, second half of the seventeenth century. 5. Fragments of a polychromic gully tile, painted with the quarter of a full blown rose, four tiles being required to complete the Tudor device: date, sixteenth century. 6. Two fine boars' tusks. 7. A squat bottle of green grass, about five inches and a half high, found in the garden of Lindsey House, Chelsea. It is of the seventeenth century.

Mr. Gunston exhibited two bosses, apparently from targets or buckles of the time of Henry VIII, lately recovered from the bed of the river Fleet. They are both of latten, one being two inches and a quarter diameter, the other, rather less than two inches. The broad flat verge of the larger specimen is graven with a mæander, and perforated for three rivets; that of the lesser boss is stamped in very low relief, with four circlets containing profile busts, with foliage between, the whole being on a granulated field. The latten umbo of a highland target found in the Thames is described in this Journal, xiii, 314.

Mr. Thomas Wright, F.S.A., laid before the meeting a drawing of a stone jug cut in solid sandstone, found recently at Moor Grange near to Kirkstall Abbey. It has a large handle and is of an uncouth form, measuring nine inches in breadth by five in height. The handle measures

six inches.

Lord Boston exhibited a remarkable example of a shoe horn belonging to the time of Elizabeth. It was procured by his lordship from the effects of a convent sold at Brussels thirty years since. It is formed out of a fine ox horn full nineteen inches and a half in length, the black tip hollowed out to hang upon a hook and surrounded by four rings. The white convex surface of the object is decorated with three panels containing the following subjects:-SPES with a large anchor; CARITAS accompanied by three nude children, one of whom holds an apple; FIDES seated on a bank, supporting a great cross, and beneath her name is the date 1595. (See Plate 15, Fig. 1.) The outlines of all the devices are well and carefully executed, and are rubbed in with a black pigment which gives the appearance of slightly shaded copper plate engravings. Mr. Syer Cuming, hon. sec., remarked that "the origin of this article of the toilet is unknown. That it was originally formed of horn seems certain from the name. Our Latin dictionaries give us the words cornu

calceatorum, and pternoboleus, but these titles are the mere fancy of the lexicographers and cannot be received as testimony that the Romans helped on their calceus with the horn. Whatever its antiquity may really be, we do not find any very clear mention of the implement until the sixteenth century, when it is spoken of so frequently and familiarly by writers of that era, that it must have then been well known and extensively employed. In John Still's comedy of Gammer Gurton's Needle,' produced in 1566, we find Diccon the Bedlem, saying in the first scene of the first act

'out at doores I hyed mee,

And caught a slyp of bacon, when I saw none spyed mee,
Which I intend not far hence, unles my purpose fayle,

Shall serve for a shoing horne to draw on two pots of ale.'

"In Nash's Pierce Pennilesse's Supplication to the Devil, 1592, p. 23, it is stated, 'We have general rules and injunctions as good as printed precepts, or statutes set doune by acte of parliament, that goe from drunkard to drunkard as still to keepe your first man, not to leave any flockes in the bottom of the cup, to knocke the glasse on your thumbe when you have done, to have some shooing horne to pull on your wine, as a rasher of the coles, or a redde herring.' And in Lenten Stuff, 1599, is a further metaphorical allusion to the implement, It not only sucks up all the rheumatick inundations, but is a shoeing horn for a pint of wine overplus.' Shakspeare makes one reference to the shoeing-horn. 'A thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's leg,' (Troilus and Cressida, v, 1). Distinct mention is made of it by Ben Jonson in his Bartholomew Fair (ii, 2). Justice Adam Overdo addressing Ursula the pig woman, exclaims, By thy leave, goodly woman, and the fatness of the fair; oily as the king's constable's lamp, and shining as his shooing-horn!"

"These citations are sufficient proof that the shoe-slip was no novelty in the days of Elizabeth and James, and we have now, by the kindness of Lord Boston, tangible evidence of its existence in the reign of the first named sovereign.

"In addition to horn, we find steel, brass, ivory, and tortoiseshell, employed in the manufacture of the shoe-slip, which was formerly not only embellished with engraving and sculpture, but with piquet work of gold and silver; but in our times neither art nor taste is displayed in the implement.

"The use of the shoe-horn or slip has not been restricted to our own quarter of the globe, for the Chinese have a perfect knowledge of it, and may, perhaps, have employed it long before its appearance among the barbarians."

Mr. Cuming exhibited an example, full five inches long, wrought of transparent buffalo horn, perforated near the apex for suspension, and

graven on the concave side with a circle inclosing three or four seal characters, probably the name of the maker or former possessor of the article. Another specimen, of much later date and more complex design, may be seen in the case of Chinese curiosities in the British Museum. It was obtained at Shanghae, and has on either side the haft a brush, that on the convex face being composed of white, that on the concave, of brown hair. It is, therefore, uncertain as to whom should be assigned the honour of the invention of the shoeing-horn-to the oriental or occidental nations?

The Rev. Prebendary Scarth transmitted a paper in continuation of former communications on Roman remains at Bath, which see, pp. 289 ante.

MAY 28TH.

T. J. PETTIGREW, F.R.S., F.S.A., V.P. in the Chair.

Mrs. Bateman, of Lomberdale House, Yolgrave, was elected an associate.

Thanks were voted to the Canadian Institute for their Journal, No. Xxxviii, for March 1862. 8vo.

The chairman read an extract of a letter he had received from Dr. R. R. Madden, of Dublin, who has recently been in Algiers, where he examined a considerable number of cromlechs, in all respects identical with those found in this country. Prior to the French occupation there were, according to the estimates of different persons, from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and eighty, but, with the exception of thirteen. now remaining perfect and to be preserved, they have been destroyed. Dr. Madden has laid the particulars before the Royal Irish Academy, in whose Transactions his paper will appear. Dr. Madden announced that he was also preparing a paper on the African origin of these monuments, connecting them with those of Phoenicia and some adjacent countries.

The Rev. T. Wiltshire transmitted various flint implements discovered at Bridlington, East Riding of York, upon which Mr. H. Syer Cuming made the following observations :

"All the flints from Bridlington are evidently split from larger masses, the majority manifesting the handiwork of man,-form and design being apparent, rudeness, however, constituting the leading character. The most simple shaped instruments are the long, narrow, triangular spawls, usually, and perhaps correctly, denominated knives, but which in one instance has distinct traces of teeth along the convex edge, converting it into a little saw. Flint saws have been found in Denmark, one in the Copenhagen Museum, measuring about seven inches in length; and in this country saw-marks have been detected on portions of stag's antlers, discovered with objects referrible to the stone period. Of more artificial

1862

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