and All-Angels, is easily
resolved by comparing the Table of Proper Lessons before and after
the last review of the _Prayer Book_ in 1662; from which it
will be seen, that the proper _second_ lessons were then
appointed for the first time, while the old second lessons for Sept.
29. were retained, either from inadvertence, or to avoid the
necessity of disarranging all the subsequent part of the calendar.
The present first lessons, Gen. xxxii., and Dan. x. v. 5., at the
same time took the place of the inappropriate chapters, Eccles.
xxxix. and xliv., which had been appointed for this day in Queen
Elizabeth's Prayer Book, 1559.

E. V.

_Beaver Hat._--Mr. T. Hudson Turner (No. 7. p. 100.) asks,
"What is the earliest known instance of the use of a _beaver
hat_ in England?"

(236}Fairholt (_Costume in England_) says, the earliest notice
of it is in the reign of Elizabeth, and gives the following
quotation from Stubbe's _Anatomy of Abuses,_ 1580:--

"And as the fashions be rare and strange, so is the stuff
whereof their hats be made divers also; for some are
of silk, some of velvet, some of taffetie, some of sarcenet,
some of wool, and, which is more curious, some of a certain
kind of fine haire; these they call _bever hattes_, of
xx, xxx, or xl shillings price, fetched from beyond the seas,
from whence a great sort of other varieties doe come besides."

GASTROS.

_Meaning of "Pisan."_--Mr. Turner (No. 7. p.100.) asks the
meaning of the term _pisan_, used in old records for some part
of defensive armour.

Meyrick (_Ancient Armour_, vol. i. p. 155, 2d ed.) gives a
curious and interesting inventory of the arms and armour of Louis le
Hutin, King of France, taken in the year 1316, in which we find,
"Item 3 coloretes _Pizanes_ de jazeran d'acier." He describes
_pizane_ (otherwise written _pizaine, pusen, pesen_) as a
collar made, or much in fashion, at Pisa. The jazeran armour was
formed of overlapping plates. In the metrical romance of _Kyng
Alisaunder_, edited by Webber, occur the lines--

"And Indiens, and Emaniens,
With swordes, lances, and _pesens._"

Weber explains the _pesens_ here as gorgets, armour for the
neck.

In more recent MSS. _pisan_ may be a contraction for
_partisan_, a halberd.

I cannot agree with your correspondent "A.F." (p.90), that the nine
of diamonds was called "the curse (cross) of Scotland" from its
resemblance to the cross of St. Andrew, which has