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EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES.

folds, seems to have been a specimen of German art, was probably a sketch froma painted window rather than from a piece of sculpture.

An owl, the nycticorax, is the reverse of Christ, and represents the Devil, thefriend of darkness. In Bestiaries the owl is generally represented surrounded byday-birds, who are disturbed by his presence, and in a woodcut published by theRev. P. Cahier, in his Essay on the Bestiaries b , already quoted, we find amongthese day-birds that threaten the impassive owl with their beaks, a magpie, drawnvery much like the one in our plate. It might be inferred that this magpie,holding something cruciform in its beak, and leaning towards a monster ap-parently watching it, is a distant recollection of the fable of the fox and the crow,but this cross is a subsequent addition, as well as the tablet (somewhat re-sembling a tombstone) on which the bird now appears perched, and againstwhich the monster seems to lean. There appears originally to have been no con-nexion between these figures. The monster is perhaps the “ Centicore,” an ima-ginary animal which is thus described in M. Cahier’s Essay , already quoted, (t. iii.p. 223): A beast from the deserts of India, in colour black, and very fierce, withtwo horns on his head, perfectly straight, and as sharp as a sword. When he fightswith another beast, he lays one horn along his back, and only uses the other.His snout is round, he has the thighs of a lion, the feet and body of a horse, andthe tail of an elephant. By using only one horn at a time he is said to symbolizemankind, who never put forth their whole force in combating the devil. As tothe inscription on the tablet, the ink is so faded that it is impossible to decipherit: but enough can be traced to shew that it was in Erench, and must have beeneither a draught or a copy of an epitaph, but without any connexion with Wilarsde Honecort. The date M.cccc.mi xx .m. juiex (July, 1483), that accompaniesthe lozenge-shaped escutcheon, is, moreover, in the writing that belongs to theclose of the fifteenth century.

b See also, for the explanation of the symbolism of animals, the Bestiaire de Guillaume, clerc de Nor-mandie, published by M. Ch. Hippeau.