After a while a further advance was made. The bee-hive hut was constructed of earthenware, of clay baked hard, so as to resist fire for an indefinite number of years. Now in the West of England in every cottage may be seen one of these “cloam” ovens. It is in structure a bee-hive hut precisely. The old tradition hangs on, is followed from century to century and year to year, and he who looks at these ovens may think of the story they tell--of the ages unnumbered that have passed since the type was fixed by the tent of the wanderer on the Siberian steppes, of the changes that type has gone through, of the stone bee-hive hut supplanting the tent of skins, of the bee-hive hut abandoned for the house with four corners, and the old hut converted into a baking oven, and then finally of the adoption of the oven of “cloam.” In another ten or fifteen years that also will have passed away, to be replaced by the iron square oven, and then one of the links that attach us to that remote past, to that mysterious race that Mme. Ragotzin says “lies at the roots of all history,” a race which has marked its course by gigantic structures, but has left behind it no history--then, I say, one of the last links will be broken. IV. Beds. I had let my house. Two days after, I received the following letter:-- “Friday. “MY DEAR SIR, “In the best bedroom is a four-post bed. Mrs. C. assures me that it will be quite impossible for her to invite any friend to stay with her unless the four-poster be removed, and its place occupied by a brass or iron double-tester. Four-posters are entirely exploded articles. I will trouble you to see to this at your earliest convenience this week. “Yours faithfully, “C. C.” Of course I complied. Two years ago I went to a sale. As I was not very well I did not remain, but left word with my agent to buy certain articles for me. Next day a waggon arrived with my purchases, and among them--a mahogany four-post bed. “Why, good gracious! I do not want _that_.” “It was going so cheap, and is of solid mahogany,” answered my agent, “so I thought you ought to have it.” That four-poster has never been put together. It lies now in an outhouse with a chaff-cutter, empty cement barrels, and much rubbish. It probably never will be used, except by boring woodworms. I saw some little while ago in one of the illustrated papers a recommendation how to make use of old carved four-post beds--that is to say, of the carved four posts. Let them be sawn through, and converted into massive picture frames or ornamental chimney-pieces. I am sorry that the four-poster is doomed to extinction, for it has a history, and it attaches us to our Scandinavian ancestry.