ed curios, as well as the leather cases
stamped and embossed so decorative and appropriate to the pistols and
knives they were made to contain. Of the finer objects there are small
curios like leather snuff boxes and trinket cases.

Of the more utilitarian leather work there is the wearing apparel of
former days, the leather clothing of Cromwellian times and the leather
boots. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a remarkably
interesting case of leather shoes showing the evolution in style and
appearance. There are some very pointed shoes worn in the fourteenth
century, a slightly different shape in the fifteenth, both contrasting
with the change in fashion which had come about in the sixteenth
century, when the boots were square and some of the shoes very rounded.
The Wellington boots of a later period are not yet much valued; there
may come a time, however, when they will be regarded as museum curios.
Leather gloves date back many centuries, and some of the old specimens
with gauntlets and decorative cuffs are interesting antiques, as well as
leather wallets, purses, and girdles.

Shoes.

Among sundry Eastern curios quaintly shaped and sometimes beautifully
embroidered shoes are met with, such as those which have been brought
over to this country from China and Eastern lands. Most of the shoes
worn in the East are slipped off easily, and, like Persian and Turkish
slippers, are made of red leather beautifully embroidered, silk, satin,
and velvet being overlaid and embroidered with silver and sequins. The
old practice of compressing the feet of young girls in China is dying
out, but some of the curious little shoes which gave such pain to their
wearers are seen as museum curios on account of their curious
decoration. Indian shoes are met with at times, especially those
embroidered with silver thread, and with green and other coloured silks.
A curious ceremony is associated with the marriage of a Turkish bride,
who wears a pair of clogs carved all over, sometimes with symbolical
significance, on her way to her prescribed ceremonial visit to the
bath. At one time it was customary for a Jewish bridegroom to present
his bride with a shoe at the conclusion of the wedding ceremony, this
custom being not far removed from that of throwing an old shoe after a
newly married couple for luck.

Horn Work.

Art in horn work was practised more a century ago than it is to-day, the
material being then a favourite one for