Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/164

 them, and assumed by other English noblemen, perhaps those liturgic embroideries might have stood him in some good stead to save his life. Had the poor aged Countess of Salisbury been heard, she might have shamed her kinsman the king not to take her life for using upon her church furniture emblems, then as now, employed upon such appliances throughout all Christendom.

For the genealogist, the lawyer, the herald, the historian, such of these old liturgical garments as, like the Syon cope, bear armorial shields embroidered upon them, will have a peculiar value, and a more than ordinary interest. Those emblazonries not only recall the names of men bound up for ever with this land's history, but may again serve, as they once before have served, to furnish the lost link in a broken pedigree, or unravel an entangled point before a law tribunal.

—BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY.

By all those for whom, among other allurements drawing them on in their studies of Botany and Zoology, one is the gratification they feel in learning how many of the subjects belonging to these two sections of the natural sciences were known, and how they used to be depicted during the middle ages, this large collection of textiles figured so often with birds, beasts and flowers, will be heartily welcomed.

Our Zoological Society prides itself, and in justice, with treating the Londoners with the first sight of a live giraffe; but here its members themselves may behold, Nos. 8591-91, p. 224; 8599, p. 228, the earliest known portrait of that curious quadruped sketched upon Sicilian silks of the fourteenth century.

We once listened to a discussion between English sportsmen about the travels of the pheasant from its native home by the banks of the river Phasis at Colchis, and the time when it reached this island. Both parties agreed in believing its coming hither to have been somewhat late. Be that as it may, our country gentlemen will see their favourite bird figured here, No. 1325, p. 60.

About the far-famed hunting cheetahs of India, we have heard, and still hear much; and on pieces of silk from eastern looms, in this collection, they are often to be seen figured.

With regard to the way in which all kinds of fowl, as well as animals are represented on these stuffs, there is one thing which we think will strike most observers who compare the drawing of them here with that