No one is more entitled to be listened to on any disputed question about the date of ivory carvings than Mr. Nesbitt. He tells us, in a very able memoir of St. Peter’s chair at Rome, printed for the Society of antiquaries (speaking on this very point), that he agrees with padre Garrucci in the opinion that works like the Veroli casket date from about the eleventh century. “They are all characterised by certain peculiarities and mannerisms. Among these are an exaggerated slenderness of limb, a marked prominence of the knee-joints, and a way of rendering the hair by a mass of small knobs. The subjects are generally taken from some mythological story, and some work of classical art has, in many cases, evidently been copied by the ivory carver; but the story is often misunderstood and misrepresented, and the movement of the figures copied with so much exaggeration, as often to become ridiculous. Animals are generally represented with great truth and spirit, and in very natural attitudes. The execution is usually remarkably neat and sharp, and the state of preservation of the ivory very good.” Caskets of this style and date almost always have the panels surrounded by the same kind of border filled with rosettes. [Illustration: H. CAIENA^{cc}, D.] The ivories inserted in the so-called Chair of St. Peter, just referred to, are of great importance upon this question. The woodcut shows, in a general way, its present condition and the arrangement of the carvings, which represent the labours of Hercules: and the student should read Mr. Nesbitt’s paper, already quoted from. There is a very curious plaque in the British museum which is also of value with regard to the date of such works as the Veroli casket. It has been perhaps a book-cover, perhaps a panel of a reliquary. The chief subject is Christ in glory, carved in the stiff Byzantine manner of the tenth or eleventh century; and in the lower left-hand corner is a group of boys, having the peculiarities of style just mentioned. Mr. Nesbitt notices another example which may be found engraved in the Thesaurus of Gori: “a tablet in the museum at Berlin, on which Christ, attended by angels, is represented in the usual Byzantine style, while below are the forty saints in very natural attitudes, and with much truth and skill.” [Illustration]