the size of an ordinary penholder or a small meat skewer. The head of this is large and thin, as if a dollar had been beaten out into a plate of double its superficial extent; and a rude figure is punched or carved upon the surface. Оссаsionally two such thin plates appear, one over each breast, and a similar display is made in the fastening of the girdle.

Ladies' ear-rings of silver are constructed in a manner somewhat similar to the articles just mentioned. A dollar is hammered out and formed into one or two crescents as the case may be, the points of which are attached by a strong silver wire hinged at one extremity, passing through the ear and fastened at the other. To the lower edge of this crescent small plates of silver are attached like tassels, varying from two in number to six or eight. Sometimes these crescents are of little more than the breadth of a finger, but at other times they are said to be half as broad as the palm of the hand. These thin and broad plates of silver remind us of numerous articles, somewhat similar in construction, found in the graves of our own country. The gorgets of extremely thin gold, the brooches and diadems, and the plating of shields, scabbards, &c., which are found in ancient graves in Britain, are merely the results of a little variety in the same general custom.

In our old English literature, the comb is invariably spoken of as a personal implement of great importance. It was one of the few valuables most prized by the ladies from three to eight centuries ago; and even gentlemen used the comb, not merely in their chamber but also in public. Several quotations from our elder poets and from ancient popular ballads are given in Ancient Meols; and woodcut illustrations show four or five which belonged respectively to the American Indians, the Ancient Irish, the Anglo Saxons, and probably the Romans.

For reasons which need not be specified in detail, the comb is an indispensable article in South America. The humbler classes, both of Indian and Spanish origin, are far from cleanly in their habits; so that what is called the "fine"toothed" comb requires a fre

quent application. Large numbers therefore, of a simple rectangular form and having teeth on both sides, are exposed in the markets, and appear to find a ready sale. The material is generally bone, horn, box, or some close grained wood resembling this last. Where the comb is not at hand, husband and wife, mother and daughter, or parent and child, frequently relieve each other in a more primitive way, in the sunshine at the door of their huts. Señor Fuentes, in his beautiful book on Lima, has a woodcut, page 177, representing a soldier at the door of his hut cleansing the hair of his rabona.

In the Museum at Santiago there is a Peruvian mummy of a woman, which has beside it certain articles valued by her sex in life; and among these is a comb, but of a very peculiar construction. I succeeded in procuring one of the same kind at Arica; and in addition to the fact that similar articles are found in ancient graves in England, this comb is remarkable from its construction. It is well known to many that the reed which is used in weaving, for driving up the threads of the weft, is composed of hundreds of thin "splits" of cane reed, placed parallel to each other on their edges. Each end is embraced between two semi-cylindrical rods, and a waxed cord passes round these rods, after the insertion of each, to keep it in its place. Now, the construction of the ancient comb is identical with that of the weaver's reed. The teeth are "splits" of cane, but instead

of being held at both ends they are fastened in the middle;

and thus it is a double
double comb.
There are the two semi-cylindrical
slips of wood, and as each tooth is
inserted between them, the waxed
cord is coiled round both. It is
clear, therefore, that the comb could
be made either coarse or fine, not
only by varying the size of the
teeth or cane-slips, but also by
varying the fineness of the waxed

cord, one fold of which passes between each pair of teeth. I have seen no combs of this kind in any of the museums of the British Islands, nor is there, apparently, anything of the kind in Denmark.

Before the pottery of Delft, and of Staffordshire had superseded plates and dishes of more primitive construction on the dressers of our grandmothers, wooden bowls of various sizes were common in kitchens, in all parts of the country. These were related to the trencher* or plate of wood which many of us have seen, and to which Shakspearet refers; but the trencher gave place to the plate of pewter, which yielded in turn to that of white delf, the precursor again of the willow pattern and of numerous other varieties. Further, among the trades now almost extinct was that of the dishturner; and I have myself seen, in boyhood, a worthy man

* John de Garlande enumerates Rotundalia among the things which cooks are accustomed to wash; and he explains the term in a note thus-" Rotundalia, "Gallice taillieurs (trencheurs): et dicuntur a rotunditate." In the Metrical Vocabulary," scissoria" is explained by the term "trenchere," and again in the English Vocabulary we find "sissorium, trenchur."

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+"I found you as a morsel, cold, upon dead Cæsar's trencher."-Antony and Cleopatra. "He is a very valiant trencher-man, he hath an excellent stomach." -Much Ado about Nothing. 'Go, serve with thy trencher hence."-Coriolanus. "Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, some mumble-news, "some trencher-knight."-Love's Labour Lost.

prepare his lathe, and out of a small section of a sycamore or beech tree, turn* a "nest" of six or eight concentric bowls. These are still used in the making of butter, and occasionally in washing vessels of china and glass.

But in Araucania there is no scarcity of timber, and the lathe appears to be unknown. The working men, however, are extremely dexterous in the use of the axe. In erecting a long line of fencing, they can cut without measurement, it is asserted, and without mallet or chisel, the square or diamond holes in the upright posts, through which the horizontal bars have to pass. In like manner, out of a solid block of wood, a man will hew a dish; giving both the convex and concave turns to its outer and inner sides respectively. Of course it is primitive looking, and exhibits both within and without marks of the strokes, including a longitudinal line in the bottom, as if it were partially a trough. Still the dish is made, and this is the well known process of its manufacture. It is related to the turned dish or bowl, as a primitive axe of chipped flint is, to one of the neolithic period, which has been carefully ground, polished, and sharpened. A dish or bowl of this kind is given in Sir W. R. Wilde's Catalogue,

p. 209. It is the same which is shown in the margin. It was found in an extensive territory of turf bog called Moyntaghs, on the south-east

66. Wooden Bowl.

of Lough Neagh, in 1832. Though this is the smallest of the specimens in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy,

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#66 Turnynge or throwynge of treen vessel, turnatura."-Promptorium Parvulorum. The term throwing" in a technical sense, is still in use in the Pottery districts. "Treen" means wooden, both in ancient English and in provincial dialects. Mr. Way remarks that "before the manufacture of earthenware, cups, mazers, and various turned vessels of wood were much employed, and the "craft of the turner must have been in constant request."

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it contained a nest of smaller ones within it, when it was found.

In a manner somewhat analogous a spoon is constructed,

LN.EWITT

67. Ordinary Wooden Spoon from Santiago.

rudely cut with a knife. Both the handle and the bowl shew the chippings, and are deficient in finish and the regularity of the curves. We have a tradition in our own country, which still lingers in the universities, about the use of a wooden spoon; but the horner drove these articles out of use by his wares, which again gave place to spoons of metal. In Harrison's Description of England, (1577,) he speaks of "the exchange of vessell, as of treene platters into pewter, and woodden spoones into siluer or tin. For, so common were all sorts of treene stuffe in old time, that a man should

hardly find foure peeces of pewter (of which one was "peradventure a salt,) in a good farmer's house." Now it is curious that the wooden spoon which is sold in the market places on the coast, at the cost of about an English penny, bears a marked resemblance to those which are found in the

68. Wooden Spoon, from the Graves at Arica.

graves of the dead. The same sort of utensil therefore has

* At the census of England and Wales in 1851, there were nine persons whose occupation was making "bowls and wooden spoons." Horn spoons are common in remote parts of the country; but the last I saw was one which I brought from Iona in 1858. I learned afterwards that it had been manufactured at Glasgow.