424
PENS.
it is expressly ordered “ that every house should have apriyv.” This order was renewed in 1533, 1697; and evenin 1700 there was found a necessity for rendering its non-compliance penal. The same order and same words are tobe found in the Coutume de Manle, Etampes , Nirernois,Bourbonnois, Calais, Tournay, and Melun . That issued forBourdeaux is in 1585. 3
The establishments for every description of cleanliness,took place in Germany , it seems, at. a much earlier periodthan iu France . St. Anthony, we are told, had no hogsin Berlin. Occasionally in Germany the duty of scavengerswas assigned to Jews . W r e hope to be excused for men-tioning circumstances which have not been thought to bebeneath the historical pens of our predecessors.
PENS.
So long as wax tablets were in use, an instrument similarto a bodkin, or stylus, as previously mentioned, was usedfor the same purpose as that to which we now employ thequill. After liquids came to be the medium to record, how -ever, the finest reeds were employed: we understand the mostsuperior species of this article, were those which Tournefort saw collected in the neighbourhood of Teflis, the capital ofGeorgia, and who has unquestionably afforded the best de-scription of them, of any naturalist or traveller; he thusdefines them: Arutido orientalis, tenuifolia, caulepleno, exqua Turcee calamos parant. Miller has also, we understand,used a similar description : but, he observes, that no plantshave ever been yet introduced into England. It is a kind ofcane, which grows no higher than a man ; the stem is onlythree or four lines in thickness, and solid from one knot toanother, that is filled with white pith. The leaves are a footand a half in length, eight or nine lines in breadth, enclosethe knots of the stem in a sheath, but the rest is smooth, andof a bright yellow colour.
Dapper and Hammy confirm the above ; the former saysthey are cultivated near the Persian gulf .
To the above description of Tournefort , is added thefollowing particular. “ The writing-pens are made of smallreeds, or canes, of the size of the largest swan quills, whichthey cut and slit as we do pens, but give them a much longer