others were observed some years ago in a neglected nook of the sacristy
of York Cathedral. At the last meeting of the Institute at Salisbury, a
number of these were exhibited in St. John's House there, but I believe
without any notice taken of them in its Proceedings; and another was
shown to the Archæological Society, at their last Chester Congress, by
Colonel Biddulph, at Chirk Castle; when more were mentioned by the
visitors as in their possession, anxious as your correspondents to know
the import of the inscriptions. They are sometimes seen exposed in the
shops of Wardour Street, and in other curiosity shops of the metropolis.

On their sunken centres all have religious types: the most common is the
temptation of Eve; the next in frequency, the Annunciation; the Spies
sent by Joshua returning with an immense bunch of grapes suspended
betwixt them, is not unfrequent; but non-scriptural subjects, as the
Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, mentioned by L.S.B., is a variety I have not
before observed.

The inscriptions vary, and are sometimes double in two concentral rings.
The most usual is that alluded to by your correspondents, and though
obviously German, neither old nor obsolete; having been viewed even by
native decipherers, through the mist of a preconceived hypothesis, have
never yet been by them satisfactorily accounted for. It is always
repeated four times, evidently from the same slightly curved die; when,
however, the enlarged circumference of the circle required more than
this fourfold repetition to go round it, the die was set on again for as
much of a fifth impression as was necessary: this was seldom more than
four or five letters, which, as pleonastic or intercalary, are to be
carefully rejected in reading the rest; their introduction has confused
many expositors.