I trust some contributor to the "N. & Q." will be able to supply farther illustrations of this custom. Should it be revived in our own times, I fear most parishes would supply only a half-hour glass for the pulpit of their church, however unanimous antiquity may be in favour of sermons of an hour's duration. One advantage presented by this ancient and precise practice was, that the squire of the parish knew exactly when it was time to put out his pipe and return for the blessing, which he cannot ascertain under the present uncertain and indefinite mode of preaching. Fosbrooke (Br. Mon., p. 286.) states that the priest had sometimes a watch found for him by the parish. The authority cited for this is the following entry in the accounts of the Chantrey Wardens of the parish of Shire in Surrey:
"Received for the priest's watch after he was dead, 13s. 4d."—Manning's Surrey, vol. i. p. 531.
This entry seems to be rather too vague and obscure to warrant the inference drawn from it. This also may be susceptible of farther illustration.
A. W. S.
Temple.
THE MEGATHERIUM AMERICANUM IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
Amongst the most interesting specimens of that collection certainly ranges the skeleton of the above animal of a primæval world, albeit but a cast; the real bones, found in Buenos Ayres, being preserved in the Museum of Madrid. To imagine a sloth of the size of a large bear, somewhat baffles our imagination; especially if we ponder upon the size of trees on which such a huge animal must have lived. To have placed near him a nondescript branch (!!) of a palm, as has been done in the Museum here, is a terrible mistake. Palms there were none at that period of telluric formation; besides, no sloth ever could ascend an exogenous tree, as the simple form of the coma of leaves precludes every hope of motion, &c. I never can view those remnants of a former world, without being forcibly reminded of that most curious passage in Berosus, which I cite from memory:
"There was a flood raging then over parts of the world.... There were to be seen, however, on the walls of the temple of Belus, representations of animals, such as inhabited the earth before the Flood."
We may thence gather, that although the ancient world did not possess museums of stuffed animals, yet, the first collection of Icones is certainly that mentioned by Berosus. I think that it was about the times of the Crusades, that animals were first rudely preserved (stuffed), whence the emblems in the coats of arms of the nobility also took their origin. I have seen a MS. in the British Museum dating from this period, where the delineation of a bird of the Picus tribe is to be found. Many things which the Crusaders saw in Egypt and Syria were so striking and new to them, that they thought of means of preserving them as mementoes for themselves and friends. The above date, I think, will be an addition to the history of collections of natural history: a work wanting yet in the vast domain of modern literature.