ed of clay, and differently
contrived. The most primitive pots for setting over the fire on the
tripod were probably of bronze.

The tripod seems to be substantially identical with what was known in
Nidderdale as the kail-pot. "This was formerly in common use," says
Mr. Lucas; "a round iron pan, about ten inches deep and eighteen
inches across, with a tight-fitting, convex lid. It was provided with
three legs. The kail-pot, as it was called, was used for cooking
pies, and was buried bodily in burning peat. As the lower peats became
red-hot, they drew them from underneath, and placed them on the top.
The kail-pot may still be seen on a few farms." This was about 1870.

The writer is doubtless correct in supposing that this utensil was
originally employed for cooking kail or cabbage and other green stuff.

Three rods of iron or hard wood lashed together, with a hook for
taking the handle of the kettle, formed, no doubt, the original
tripod. But among some of the tribes of the North of Europe, and
in certain Tartar, Indian, and other communities, we see no such
rudimentary substitute for a grate, but merely two uprights and a
horizontal rest, supporting a chain; and in the illustration to
the thirteenth or fourteenth century MS., once part of the abbatial
library at St. Albans, a nearer approach to the modern jack is
apparent in the suspension of the vessel over the flame by a chain
attached to the centre of a fireplace.

Not the tripod, therefore, but the other type must be thought to have
been the germ of the later-day apparatus, which yielded in its turn to
the Range.

The fireplace with a ring in the middle, from which is suspended the
pot, is represented in a French sculpture of the end of the fourteenth
century, where two women are seated on either side, engaged in
conversation. One holds a ladle, and the other an implement which may
be meant for a pair of bellows.

In his treatise on Kitchen Utensils, Neckam commences with naming a
table, on which the cook may cut up green stuff of various sorts, as
onions, peas, beans, lentils, and pulse; and he proceeds to enumerate
the tools and implements which are required to carry on the work:
pots, tripods for the kettle, trenchers, pestles, mortars, hatchets,
hooks, saucepans, cauldrons, pails, gridirons, knives, and so on.
The head-cook was to have a little apartment, where he could prepare
condiments and dressings; and a sink was to be provided for the
viscera and