ing cards.

Another example of this variation in the suit signs, as well as of a
variation from the ordinary rectangular form, is to be found in the
round card (Fig. 8), of a somewhat earlier date than the preceding,
where the suits are Hares, Parrots, Pinks, and Columbines, and which
when complete make also a pack of fifty-two, the value of the cards
following the sequence of King, Queen, and Knave being indicated by the
Arabic numeral at the base of and the Roman figure at the top of each,
the card shown being the Six of Hares.

[Illustration: FIG. 8]

In both of them there is a great decorative facility and clever
adaptation to the form of the card. To indicate the coincidence of idea,
in the next (Fig. 9) we have a round card from India--one of the "Coate"
cards of a pack, or more properly series, of 120 cards. The material
used in their manufacture is matted vegetable fibre coated with lacquer
and painted by hand. Most of the playing cards of Persia are also round,
and are similarly decorated by the same means. About a dozen years ago
round playing cards were patented in America as a novelty, in ignorance
of the fact that cards of that shape had probably been in common use in
the East, centuries before the discovery of that great and inventive
country!

[Illustration: FIG. 9.]

[Illustration: FIG. 10.]

As an illustration (Fig. 10) of the suit signs of Southern Europe, we
take a card from a Portuguese pack of 1610, the "Cavalier de Batons"
(Clubs); the other suit signs are Swords, Coins, and Cups. The anatomy
of the charger and the self-satisfied aspect of the Cavalier are
striking; and as to the former, we are reminded of the bizarre examples
of hippic adornment which, on a summer Bank Holiday, may be seen on the
road to Epping Forest.

[Illustration: FIG. 11.]

Among the secondary uses to which playing cards have been applied, we
find them as political weapons. Among such cards are those which were
produced to commemorate what is historically known as the "Titus Oates
Plot" in 1678, one of the most prominent incidents being the murder of
Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who is here shown (Fig. 11), carried on a horse,
the day after his murder, to Primrose Hill, where the body was put into
a ditch, the carrying on the horse and the discovery in the ditch being
shown as coincident. They were produced, probably, as one of the means
of inflaming the public mind against the Roman Catholics, which led to
the executio