d pots, which were in turn round, oval,
square, hexagonal, and cylindrical, some being like miniature well
buckets with perforated sides and blue metal liners.

Punch and Toddy.

A hundred years ago the punch bowl was inseparable from the convivial
feast. It was a favourite sideboard ornament, and found in frequent use
on the dining table, round which smokers and card players drew up and
filled their glasses with punch and toddy. Ladles were indispensable,
and were varied in form and in the materials of which they were
composed. Punch ladles were in earlier days made of cherry-wood, mounted
with a silver rim and fitted with a long handle, often made of twisted
horn. The horn, which was somewhat pliable, was secured to the bowl by
a silver socket. Other ladles were made entirely of silver, some having
a current coin of the realm, a guinea preferably, fixed in the bottom of
the bowl--for luck. Some of the ladles were beautifully decorated in
repousse, others were shaped like sauce boats; there were ladles without
lips, others deep like the porringers, and yet others were quite round
like a drinking bowl. Some are family heirlooms, others have been
purchased in curio shops, and unfortunately during the last few years so
great has been the demand for them that many modern copies have been
palmed off as genuine antiques. The hall-mark on the rim is in many
instances a guarantee of age, although some of the genuine specimens do
not appear to have been hall-marked at all. The fact that an old coin is
found fixed within the bowl is no criterion of antiquity, and does not
always indicate that the punch ladle itself is contemporary with the
coin, for old coins are common enough and readily fixed in new ladles.

Collectors of old china simply revel in punch bowls. Punch was at the
height of its popularity when most of the domestic porcelain and
decorative china, now rare and valuable, was being made. The best known
potters in Worcester, Derby, Bristol, Liverpool, and the Potteries made
punch bowls, some ornamented with their characteristic decorations;
others were specially emblematical, such, for instance, as the bowls
covered with masonic signs; some were nautical in design, and many were
enriched with coats of arms and crests. Several of the punch bowls
belonging to the old City Companies are on view in the Guildhall Museum,
and isolated specimens are seen to be in other places.

Oriental china was at that time being impor