Many of the purposes to which the ancient Briton applied his manufacture of baskets were singularly useful, and so well were they adapted to their peculiar purposes that they are employed almost unchanged even to the present day. The coracle of basket and hide is still used by sportsmen and poachers on the waters of North Wales.[8] The bothies of the Scottish Highlanders are yet constructed of wattles; and even in the cottages of a better kind the doors and sleeping cribs are frequently of the same fabric: so also are their rude little sledges and carts; and until of late their horse harness also.[9] Modern civilization does not now disdain to use for drags, dog-carts, and German waggons the same strong yet light and elastic materials which the ancient Briton probably employed for his formidable war-chariot; and our ancestors of the last century knew well the value of the stage-coach “_basket_” as a convenient means of conveyance over their rough roads. “Hanapers (or hampers) of twyggys” were long the official receptacles for certain documents connected with the Court of Chancery, and the name is still, or was recently, applied to an officer of that court. The firm hold with which long-established customs, combined with convenience, fix themselves upon the reason of men, and the pertinacity with which nations cling to their old habits, refusing, for the sake of old associations, alterations of the most obvious utility, is altogether marvellous. Speaking of this power and permanency of custom, Lord Bacon curiously illustrates this subject by an anecdote pertinent to the matter before us. “I remember, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s time, of England, an Irish rebel condemned, put up a petition to the Deputy that he should be hanged in a withe, and not in an halter, because it had been so used with former rebels.”[10] Another author, in his version of the same story, says that this “favour of being hanged in gads (twisted withes, so called after the manner of the country), was not refused.”[11] This, though probably an extreme, is by no means an unique prejudice in favour of ancient modes of execution, a prejudice which extends beyond life, influencing nations in their adherence to old-established sepulchral customs.