_Touchstone's Dial._--Mr. Knight, in a note on _As You Like It_, gives us the description of a dial presented to him by a friend who had picked it "out of a deal of old iron," and which he supposes to be such a one as the "fool i' the forest" drew from his poke, and looked on with lacklustre eye. It is very probable that this species of chronometer is still in common use in the sister kingdom; for my brother mentions to me that, when at school in Ireland some fifteen or sixteen years since, he had seen one of those "_ring-dials_" in the possession of one of his schoolfellows: and Mr. Carleton, in his amusing _Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, thus describes them:-- "The ring-dial was the hedge-schoolmaster's next best substitute for a watch. As it is possible that a great number of our readers may never have heard of--much less seen one, we shall in a word or two describe it--nothing indeed could be more simple. It was a bright brass ring, about three quarters of an inch broad, and two inches and a half in diameter. There was a small hole in it, which, when held opposite the sun, admitted the light against the inside of the ring behind. On this were marked the hours and the quarters, and the time was known by observing the hour or the quarter on which the slender ray, that came in from the hole in front, fell." J.M.B. _America and Tartary._-- "Un jesuite rencontra en Tartarie une femme huronne qu'il avoit connue au Canada: il conclut de cette etrange aventure, que le continent de l'Amerique se rapproche au nord-ouest du continent de l'Asie, et il devina ainsi l'existence du detroit qui, longtemps apres, a fait la gloire de Bering et de Cook."--Chateaubriand, _Genie du Christianisme_, Partie 4., Livre 4., Chap. 1. Yet, with all deference to the edifying letters of this missionary jesuit, it is difficult to make such distant ends meet. It almost requires a copula like that of the fool, who, to reconcile his lord's assertion that he had with a single bullet shot a deer in the ear and the hind foot, explained that the deer was scratching his ear at the time with his foot. Subjoined is one more _proof_ of the communication which once existed between America and the Old World: Colomb disoit meme avoir vu les restes des fourneaux de Salomon dans les mines de Cibao."--Chateaubriand, _Genie, Notes, &c_. MANLEIUS. _Deck of Cards._-- "The king was slily finger'd from the _deck_." _Henry VI._, pt. iii. Act v. Sc. 1. It is well known, and properly noted, that a pack of cards was formerly called a _deck_; but it should be added that the term is still commonly used in Ireland, and from being made use of in the famed song of "De Night before Larry was stretched," "De deck being called for dey play'd, Till Larry found one of dem cheated,"