Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/487

Rh iron object, probably a weight, found at Bays Hill, Cheltenham.—An enamelled ornament, with armorial bearings on each side (see wood-cut). Date, about 1300. On one side appear to be the arms of Chastillon sur

Marne, (Gules, two pallets vair, a chief or,) here differing only in having three such pallets. On the other side is an escutcheon, quarterly, 1 and 4, a cross patée gu., 2 and 3, an escallop (colour lost). This little object is probably of Limoges work; it is not easy to explain the original intention, the plate being perforated for attachment only at one side.

Mr. exhibited a rubbing from a carving on a pillar in Eastry Church, Kent. It is a little more than five feet from the floor, and at a convenient height consequently for inspection, on the southwest face of an octagonal pillar (being the second from the west), between the nave and the south aisle. It consists (see the cut) of three concentric circles an inch apart, the outer one being eleven inches in diameter. The inner and middle circles are divided by radii into twenty-eight equal parts, and in each of the compartments so formed between these two circles is one of the first seven letters of the alphabet, and above every fourth is another of these letters, in a compartment formed between the middle and outer circles, by the radii there being carried through to the outer circle. In this manner the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, are arranged so that each of them occurs five times; but the order of them is the reverse of alphabetical, the

letters between the outer and middle circles being to be read immediately before those over which they respectively stand. Such is the order in which the Dominical letters succeed each other, the two letters one above the other corresponding with those of the bissextile or leap years. As after every twenty-eight years, which is the period of the solar cycle, the Dominical letters occur again in the same manner, that cycle has been aptly represented by a circle divided into twenty-eight parts. The result