By _Raisins_ it is probable that Currants are meant; the imported fruit of that name of which we make puddings and pies was called by our ancestors _Raisin de Corance_.—In the Percy Household Book it is said that 200 pounds _of Raisins de Corance_ should be purchased for the use of the Earl of Northumberland’s family, which were to serve one year. PEACOCKS. India, says Mr. Pennant, gave us Peacocks, and we are assured by Knox, in his History of Ceylon, that they are still found in the wild state, in vast flocks, in that island and in Java. So beautiful a bird could not be permitted to be a stranger in the more distant parts; for so early as the days of Solomon (1 Kings, x. 22.) we find among the articles imported in his Tarshish navies, Apes and Peacocks. A monarch so conversant in all branches of natural history, would certainly not neglect furnishing his officers with instructions for collecting every curiosity in the country to which they made voyages, which gave him a knowledge that distinguished him from all the princes of his time. Ælian relates that they were brought into Greece from some barbarous country, and that they were held in such high estimation, that a male and female were valued at Athens at 1000 _drachmæ_, or £32. 5_s._ 10_d._ Their next step might be to Samos; where they were preserved about the temple of Juno, being the birds sacred to that goddess; and Gellius in his _Noctes Allicæ_ commends the excellency of the Samian Peacocks. It is therefore probable that they were brought there originally for the purposes of superstition, and afterwards cultivated for the uses of luxury. We are also told, when Alexander was in India, he found vast numbers of wild ones on the banks of the Hyarotis, and was so struck with their beauty, as to appoint a severe punishment on any person that killed them. Peacocks’ crests, in ancient times were among the ornaments of the kings of England. Ernald de Aclent (Acland) paid a fine to king John in a hundred and forty palfries, with sackbuts, _lorains_, gilt spurs and peacock’s crests, such as would be for his credit.—Some of our regiments of cavalry bear on their helmets, at present, the figure of a peacock. ANCIENT LIBRARIES. Many events have contributed to deprive us of a great part of the literary treasures of antiquity. A very fatal blow was given to literature by the destruction of the Phœnician temples and the Egyptian colleges, when those kingdoms and the countries adjacent, were conquered by the Persians, about 350 years before Christ. The Persians had a great dislike to the religion of the Phœnicians and the Egyptians, and this was one reason for destroying their books, of which Eusebius says they had a great number.