The Ionic cornice affords but little scope for further observation, more particularly in the Athenian examples, in which it consists of little more than the _corona_ and cymatium above it, and some narrow _bed-mouldings_ beneath the former member, partly got out of its hollowed soffit or under surface. Consequently the whole cornice looks rather meagre and poor, especially if the richer form of capital with a necking to it be employed for the columns. In such case there is no corresponding degree of richness and increased importance in what is, nevertheless, the completing member or division of the entire Order, and ought accordingly to be treated as such. On this account we hold the cornice of the Erechtheum example to be very unsatisfactory, and to derogate from what is the character of the Order in all other respects: while the capital is particularly ornate, luxuriant, and complicated in design, the cornice, which, as has been before remarked, is to be considered as the capital of the entire Order, is particularly simple and severe; and owing to the want of a sufficiency of bed-mouldings beneath it, the corona appears to jut out too abruptly immediately over the frieze, without due preparation for it. Were the frieze sculptured, such enrichment would, perhaps, without any thing further, confer an adequate degree of ornateness upon the whole entablature, and bring it into keeping with the highly finished columns. If, on the contrary, the frieze is to be left plain, the best way would be to reduce its height a little, and perhaps that of the architrave also, and enlarge the cornice by introducing _dentels_ into it. These last-mentioned members,—which, although considered by modern writers to be characteristic of the Ionic Order, and to be to its cornice what _mutules_ are to the Doric, and _modillions_ to the Corinthian, do not appear to have been so regarded by the Greeks themselves,—consist of a series of narrow upright blocks (supposed to represent the ends of joists), placed closely together, so that the spaces between them, which are only about half as wide as the blocks themselves, appear to _indent_ that portion of the cornice, which, when introduced without being so ornamented, is called an uncut _dentel band_. The Priene example, to which we referred when speaking of Ionic bases, offers what, in our opinion at least, is a far better model for an Ionic cornice than that of the Erechtheum, and which, with perhaps some modification of it, might very well be applied to the more florid Athenian Order; and though to do so would be contrary to _precedent_, that would matter little, so that the change itself were in conformity with artistic effect and æsthetic principles.