In a personal communication to Abbé Cochet made in 1858 by Mr. Thomas Wright, the latter stated that he had seen at Downing in Flintshire with Lord Fielding five crystal balls, bearing labels declaring that they came from the sepulchres of the kings of France violated at the time of the French Revolution. They had been purchased about 1810 at the sale of the Duchess of Portland’s effects.[328] Among the crystal balls found in French sepulchres may be noted one discovered by Rigollot in 1853 at Arras, and preserved in the Museum of that city; this still has the original gold mounting serving to attach it to the necklace from which it had been worn suspended. Another found at or near Levas was in the possession of M. Dancoise, a notary of Hénin-Liétard, dept. Pas de Calais.[329] In the Bibliothèque at Dieppe there is a crystal ball, 32 mm. in diameter, found at Douvrend, dept. Seine-Inferieure, in 1838, in a Merovingian tomb; this is pierced through.[330] The department of Moselle supplied three discoveries of this kind, crystal balls having been found in a tomb at St. Preux-la-Montagne, Sablon and Moineville near Briey, the latter measuring 36 mm. in diameter.[331] The Saxon tombs of England have also furnished a contingent of crystal balls, for example at Chatham, at Chassel Down on the Isle of Wight, where four were discovered, at Breach Down, Barham, near Canterbury, at Fairford, Gloucestershire, and also in Kent.[332] We should also note a crystal ball found in a funerary urn at Hinsbury Hill, Northamptonshire;[333] this as well as the one found at Fairford was facetted.[334] From St. Nicholas, Worcestershire, is reported a crystal ball 1½ inches in diameter.[335] In his “Hydrotaphia, or Urn Burial,” published in 1658, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), author of the “Religio Medici,” relates that there was at that time in the possession of Cardinal Farnese, an urn in which, besides a number of antique engraved gems, an ape of agate, and an elephant of amber, there had been found a crystal ball and six “nuts” of crystal.[336] One of the largest and most perfect crystal balls is in the Dresden “Grüne Gewölbe” (Green Vaults). This weighs 15 German pounds and measures 6⅔ inches in diameter; it was undoubtedly used for purposes of augury. Ten thousand dollars was the price paid for it in 1780.