Portable sun-dials succeeded fixed dials; they have been known as long as the Christian era; shepherds' dials were the "Kalendars" or "Cylindres" about which treatises were written as early as the thirteenth century. They were small cylinders of wood or ivory, having at the top a kind of stopper with a hinged gnomon; they are still used in the Pyrenees. Pretty little "ring-dials" of brass, gold, or silver, are constructed on the same principle. The exquisitely wrought portable dial shown on this page is a very fine piece of workmanship, and must have been costly. It is dated 1764, and is eleven inches in diameter. It is a perfect example of the advanced type of dial made in Italy, which had a simpler form as early certainly as A.D. 300. The compass was added in the thirteenth century. The compass-needle is missing on this dial, its only blemish. The Italians excelled in dial-making; among their interesting forms were the cross-shaped dials evidently a reliquary. [Illustration: Portable Sun-dial.] Portable dials were used instead of watches. There is at the Washington headquarters at Morristown a delicately wrought oval silver case, with compass and sun-dial, which was carried by one of the French officers who came here with Lafayette; George Washington owned and carried one. The colonists came here from a land set with dials, whether they sailed from Holland or England. Charles I had a vast fancy for dials, and had them placed everywhere; the finest and most curious was the splendid master dial placed in his private gardens at Whitehall; this had five dials set in the upper part, four in the four corners, and a great horizontal concave dial; among these were scattered equinoctial dials, vertical dials, declining dials, polar dials, plane dials, cylindrical dials, triangular dials; each was inscribed with explanatory verses in Latin. Equally beautiful and intricate were the dials of Charles II, the most marvellous being the vast pyramid dial bearing 271 different dial faces. Those who wish to learn of English sun-dials should read Mrs. Gatty's _Book of Sun-dials_, a massive and fascinating volume. No such extended record could be made of American sun-dials; but it pleases me that I know of over two hundred sun-dials in America, chiefly old ones; that I have photographs of many of them; that I have copies of many hundred dial mottoes, and also a very fair collection of the old dial faces, of various metals and sizes. I know of no public collection of sun-dials in America save that in the Smithsonian Institution, and that is not a large one. Several of our Historical Societies own single sun-dials. In the Essex Institute is the sun-dial of Governor Endicott; another, shown on page 344, was once the property of my far-away grandfather, Jonathan Fairbanks; it is in the Dedham Historical Society. [Illustration: Sun-dial in Garden of Frederick J. Kingsbury, Esq.]