There is, of course, a vast difference between the storage jar and the smaller box carried about by the smoker much in the same way as the pouch is now used. Many still prefer metal to other materials, and it is no uncommon thing to see brass and steel boxes in use in industrial districts. Few, however, excepting modern replicas of the antique, are decorated in the way the old Dutch tobacco boxes of brass were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is not very clear why so many of them were engraved with scriptural subjects, for there does not appear to be much connection between biblical history and the pipe! Engravings of scenes depicting Noah and the Flood are common, the incongruity of the clothing shown being often commented upon; one writer upon the subject referred to the engravings on one of these tobacco boxes as being ornamented with Jewish characters wearing knee breeches of English type, talking to Dutch frauen. Historical portraits are not uncommonly met with on these quaint boxes, and quite a number of battle scenes have been engraved. Such metal work has been gathered together in several museums, and in the British Museum there is a fine collection of various shapes, some oval, others long and narrow, and some almost square. The brass tobacco box illustrated in Fig. 83 has a medallion portrait of Frederick the Great in the centre, such embossed subjects being very popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both in England and in Holland, although Dutch artists gave preference to scriptural subjects, many fine examples of which are to be seen in our museums. Fortunately there are many really curious specimens obtainable at a moderate cost. [Illustration: FIG. 82.--THREE CURIOUS PIPE-STOPPERS.] [Illustration: FIG. 83.--BRASS TOBACCO BOX. (_In the British Museum._)] Smokers' Tongs and Stoppers. Curious little ember tongs were formerly used by smokers for taking up hot embers or ashes with which to light their pipes. Of these there are several varieties, most of them of polished steel, cut and chased. In the eighteenth century similar tongs were used for holding cigars; some were fitted with small knives, and a few of the earlier examples included tinder boxes. Not infrequently one end of the handle terminated in a tobacco stopper.