drinking cups and a variety of
ornamental work. Old snuff boxes were frequently made of horn impressed
or stamped with beautiful designs, such as hunting scenes and
mythological figures. Horn can either be cut, moulded, or turned, its
natural elasticity making it very durable and difficult to break. Its
source of supply is chiefly from the horned cattle, the buffalo and the
bison, the horns of these beasts in their natural state frequently being
mounted on shields just as in later years the horns of smaller animals,
such as the South African varieties of the ibex, springbok, and similar
horned sheep and cattle, are brought over to this country and mounted as
ornaments. It is said that the old art of impressing or stamping horn
and tortoiseshell has long been discarded, and is only retained for
stamping buttons. Fancy hair ornaments were frequently so moulded, the
horn or tortoiseshell being afterwards decorated with inlaid silver and
gold.

Some of the pressed work is extremely beautiful and has every appearance
of being done by hand, but much cheaper, of course, as the patterns
could be multiplied to any extent after the dies had been cut. Thin
plates of horn were formerly used in lanterns, and a similar piece of
horn was used as a protector over the ancient alphabet and child's
spelling tablet that gave it the name of the horn book. Among household
curios are drinking horns elaborately etched, and frequently turned in a
lathe. They were popular in the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries, and the turned patterns then so common were copied by the
silversmiths, who made silver tankards and drinking cups on the same
models. The cornucopia or horn of abundance figures frequently in
sculpture, paintings, and works of art. The horn is one of the early
instruments of music (see Chapter XV), and has long been associated with
sports. It has sounded the "Tally Ho" of the fox hunt, and played an
important part in coaching days. In some old houses veritable horns are
found hung in conspicuous places as relics of the past, but the coaching
horns just referred to are for the most part of metal.

The Worshipful Company of Horners is still in evidence at City feasts.
The work of the craft in olden time, as recorded by the chaplain of the
Company in a little book he has prepared, giving the history of the
Horners, was practised in the days of King Alfred. At least two hundred
and fifty years before the Norman Conquest many of