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 other than its central metal boss is covered with twenty-four concentric rows of spherically headed nails. We are unable to find any record which shows how the French National Collection became possessed of it. It is of fine workmanship, and like a buckler of very similar construction, but of larger proportions, in the Tower of London (Fig. 615) may be considered to date from the first quarter of the XVIth century. Another such buckler made its appearance a few years ago in some country sale, and was catalogued as "Soudanese"; but it was, as the illustration shows (Fig. 616), a fine English example of exactly the same type as the two just described. In the processions of knights and soldiers in the "Triumph of Maximilian" (one of Burgkmair's woodcuts) are depicted foot fighters of the early part of the XVth century armed with swords and bucklers, the latter of very two types, some rectangular and of painted wood (Fig. 617) and others small and circular, apparently made of metal and of the boce order (Fig. 618). Of the small rectangular shield of this date, not of German but of Italian origin, we illustrate an example (Fig. 619); we also picture a specimen of the small round boce, taken from the collection of the Duc de Dino, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (Fig. 620).

English, early XVIth century

Having already wandered from the century within which we proposed to restrict ourselves we feel that little excuse is necessary for our making mention