8. Oviform elongated of mixed character,

9. Oviform elongated,

10. Globular, but

sometimes oviform,

Species 11. Oviform of com

(a) With two flat handles, looped at posite character, the bottom, and incurved upon the lip

12. Expanded,

at top.

(b.) The same with masks upon the

handles.

(c.) The same with masks on the handles, but the knobs on the shoulders commuted for swans' heads and necks.

D'Hancarville, vol. i. plate 52.

(a.) Circular, with or without a globule* or gland in the centre.

(b.) The same with looped handles, and four or six knobs.

Englefield vases, plate 27.

(c.) With or without looped handles incurved, and with or without a stem. Englefield vases, plates 26. 35. No. 6.

Genus NYMPHEO-ides.

Species 1. Oblate spheroidal,

(a.) One handle on the neck,, neck long, throat contracted suddenly.

Englefield vases, plate 34. No. 4.

(b.) Handle low, and looped above, with spout.

* In imitation of the gland or nectary in the centre of the summit of the Nymphæa Lotus, which secretes a fragrant and spicy liquor, filling about one half of the cup of yellow petals in the centre of the corolla. This tazza, with the gland in the centre, was probably the Thericlean cup, which, as we learn from a fragment of Aristophanes, preserved by Athenæus, was manufactured by a celebrated potter of the name of Thericles, who was contemporary with that dramatic poet. Aristophanes there terms it súxúxλwтov ảσælda (p. 472. Ed. Casaub.), as I presume, from its flattened and circular shape, with a boss in the centre. It may also have been the same as the pian Baλavesóupados of Cratinus, apud Athenæum, lib. xi. p. 501. Ed. Casaub.

Species 2. Semi-oblate spheroidal,

Species 1. Urceolate,

With two handles horizontally looped, ascending.

Genus NUPHARO-ides.

2. Urceolate nar

row,

3. Cylindrical,

4. Expanded, and
much compressed.

Shoulder wanting, one handle on the neck, lip flat, throat narrow.

Compressed in the middle, lip flat, neck tapering.

(a.) With a lid or cover.

Englefield vases, plate 30. No. 3. (b.) With cover, stem, and foot; cover with upright stem, and summit flat, circular. Vase within, four-celled, cells with lids, which, as also the surface of the valves or dissepiments, are painted; cells surrounding a central tube, which is closed by a diminutive vase with a cover.*

Collection of S. Rogers, Esq.

• This curious article affords a strong presumptive proof of the forms of vases

having been derived from the seed-vessels of plants.

Of the Water-Lilies of Egypt and Greece.-The Cibotium and Cibotus, or Ark of the Covenant.-Mysterious Allusions in the Nymphæa Lotus.These Allusions discoverable in the Grecian, Moorish, and Gothic Architecture.-The latter probably derived from Alexandria in Egypt.

THE foregoing tables will furnish a pretty correct indication of the form of almost every painted vase in the collections of the British Museum, and of Thomas Hope, Esq., which are by far the most considerable in England. I will proceed to offer some remarks on those vegetable models, which have suggested to me the means of classifying these vessels, that the reader may judge, how far the rationale of my scheme may coincide with the opinions of the ancients, in fashioning them, and in applying them to religious uses.

Of the two kinds of Egyptian water-lily, which I have selected as the original models of my two first genera, the Nelumbium has been briefly described by Athenæus in his third book, and more scientifically by Rheede in his Hortus Malabaricus, and by Rumphius in the Herbarium Amboinense, and recently by Sir James Edward Smith, M. D., in his

Exotic Botany, where a representation of the plant is given in a coloured plate. Herodotus has described the second in the following terms :— "When the Nile is full, and covers the plains like a vast sea, many lilies "are produced in the water, which the Egyptians call Lotus. In times of "scarcity they dry these in the sun, and bruising what they find in the "centre resembling a poppy-head, they make bread of it, baking it with "fire."* As I am not aware of any modern publication in which the Nymphæa Lotus is fully and satisfactorily described, I will venture to add something further respecting it. The corolla of this is generally styled by botanists polypetalous, but an attentive observation of a well blown speciment enables me to assert, that while the calyx is composed of four leafits in a double and alternate series, that is to say, of four coloured and four particoloured leafits, the corolla is octopetalous in a double series, the inner circle of eight white petals being much smaller than the outer circle of the same number. In the centre is a cup formed of more than eighty small petals in regular sets of about four yellow incurved leafits, each diminishing in length towards the centre. On the tip of each of these, and on the inner side, the anthers are disposed in two thin parallel lines. A fifth or interior barren leafit is connate with a recurved rib of the summit of the capsule, and forms the extremity of the rib, for the summit consists of an umbilical gland in the centre of a salver, with various spongy rays, apparently springing from the gland, each in the form of a cymatium, but horizontally disposed. The hollow of this summit, I presume to say, furnished the idea of the tazza. If a set of the four inner fruitful leafits or stamina, and the fifth barren member, be separated from this central cup of the flower by the knife, they furnish the ornament which decorated the prows of the ancient galleys, called Acrostolium, while the salver of the summit, abridged of about one third of its disk, re

* Επεὰν πλήρης γένηται ὁ ποταμὸς, καὶ τὰ πεδία πελαγίσῃ, φύεται ἐν τῷ ὕδατι κρίνεα πολλὰ, τὰ Αἰγύπλιοι καλέουσι Λωτόν. ταῦτ ̓ ἐπεὰν δρέψωσι αὐαίνουσι πρὸς ἥλιον, καὶ ἔπειτα τὸ ἐκ τοῦ μέσου τοῦ λωτοῦ, τῇ μήκωνι ἐὸν ἐμφερές, πλίσαντες, ποιεῦνται ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἄρτους ὀπλοὺς @upí.-Lib. ii. s. 92. This of the Nymphæa Lotus. He then proceeds to describe the other kind of lily of the Nile, with a flower like a rose, and fruit like a wasp's nest, namely, the Nelumbium. From Theophrastus it also appears, that the Nymphæa Lotus is a native of the Euphrates.

+ Blown by Mr Anderson, the intelligent and very zealous curator of the Botanic Garden of the Apothecaries' Company at Chelsea.