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 in respect of the pommel. A good example illustrating this type is the remarkable dagger that was originally in the Forman Collection. It is of such special interest that we give a full description of it, only regretting the impossibility of obtaining a photograph of it. The grip is of bronze, ribbed and gilt, with the "besague" guard of triangular form chased and gilt. The blade, which is of peculiar strength, tapers suddenly, the lower section being quadrangular. The pommel is formed as a three-sided pyramid, each face being engraved with (I) a shield of arms, a bendy of six in base, a human face on a chief, a dragon on its back, above the words, (II) a shield bearing quarterly:—1, a castle triple-towered; 2, a wolf salient; 3, an eagle displayed; 4, three bars, (III) the figure of a man in the costume of the latter part of the XVth century, holding in his left hand a dagger, his right foot upon a globe, above him the motto. The arms represented on the first face of the pommel closely resemble those of the family of Orsini as given by Litta. This dagger, which Mr. Forman acquired in Florence in 1859, is doubtless Italian and of the third quarter of the XVth century.

It will readily be believed that when the spirit of Renaissance ornamentation began to make itself felt, the rondel dagger was no more immune from its influence than any other weapon of late XVth and early XVIth century date. In the late M. Edmond Foulc's Collection was a rondel dagger illustrative of such decoration (Fig. 789). We give it, however, merely as a type; for we regard its genuineness as being open to grave suspicion. A mid-XVIth century illustration of the rondel dagger appears in a portrait of a German nobleman and his son, attributed to Colin de Neufchâtel, in the collection of Mr. George Durlacher. Hanging to the belt of the father is represented a stout rondel dagger, with a flattened spheroidal pommel and a large circular rondel guard, slightly convex, the whole most elaborately decorated (Fig. 790).

THE THIRD TYPE OF DAGGER—VARIETIES OF THE "KIDNEY" ORDER

The dagger, known from the formation of the hilt as the dague à rognons, "kidney" dagger, or dague à couillettes, had its origin in northern Europe; but its evolution is somewhat difficult to determine. We are not acquainted with any actual specimen that can be assigned to a date prior to the early part of the XVth century. The early Scottish dirks, which more or less developed