One of the fingers of a bronze statue in the British Museum, a Roman work of the third or fourth century, A.D., has a ring on its second joint. We are fortunate enough to be able to reproduce here a full-size drawing of this, courteously made for the present book by Sir Charles Hercules Read, Curator of the Department of British and Mediæval Antiquities and Ethnography in the Museum. In a letter to M. Deloche, the German archæologist Lindenschmit states that in only one instance was he able to ascertain definitely on which finger the rings of the early mediæval period were worn. This concerned a female skeleton, exceptionally well preserved, owing to favorable conditions of sepulture; on the fourth finger of the right hand there was a bronze ring. This sepulchre was found at Obermorlen, in Hessen-Darmstadt. Researches in France have furnished confirmation of this. In the Merovingian cemetery of Yeulle (dept. Pas-de-Calais) a woman’s ring was found on the right hand of the skeleton, as was also the case with two rings in the Visigothic and Merovingian cemetery at Herpes (dept. Charente), and this proved to be the case with almost all the early medieval rings found in this region. On the contrary, M. Albert Béquet, Curator of the Archæological Museum of Namur, and the French archæologist, M. L. Pilloy, report the discovery of rings placed upon the left hand. As a possible explanation of these contradictory results, the opinion has been advanced that the rings on the right hand were wedding rings, and those on the left, rings worn for ornament, as there is good evidence that at an early period among the Gauls the betrothal ring was put on the right hand, not on the left.[108] The portrait by Coello of Maria of Austria, daughter of Charles V of Germany, shows on the fourth finger of the left hand a ring set with a large table-cut stone, which may be a ruby, or else a rather dark-hued spinel. The right hand is gloved, the parts of the glove covering the index and fourth fingers having slits so as to give space for the rings on those fingers. There is an elaborate girdle of table-cut stones, a richly worked cross with three pendent pear-shaped pearls is suspended from a gauze scarf about the neck, splendid pearl earrings hang from the ears, and the coiffure is surmounted by a head ornament set with precious stones and pearls.