Merchants' marks appear to have been especially common in towns depending on the manufacture of wool. It so happens that one of those towns was that in the immediate neighbourhood of which these chapters were written; and, agreeably to what has been stated, the Church of St. Peter, Tiverton, which owed much to the munificence of the old merchants, carries a number of such marks. East Anglia is particularly rich in such marks, as is shown by Mr. W. C. Ewing's papers in the "Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society" (vol. iii.). Mr. Dawson Turner, in his Historical Introduction to Colman's "Engravings of Sepulchral Brasses in Norfolk and Suffolk," after stating that merchants or burgesses were probably the only classes except the military that were represented on monuments, goes on to observe that "these are chiefly to be found in borough towns or the parochial churches of large commercial counties where the woollen manufacture flourished." And, as we have pointed out, the merchant's mark very often accompanied him to his grave. We have now reached the borderland, where from urban customs we pass to those of the country; and it will form a natural transition if we conclude the chapter and the section with some remarks on the rural use of marks, which is still common in regard to stock. In this Connexion they are generally styled yeomen's marks; and, from the circumstances of the case, it seems certain that the adoption of such symbols took place on the farm long before they were employed on the mart. The point has been raised whether so-called "pictorial marks" are, and have always been, nothing more than rude drawings of familiar objects. Mr. J. H. Scott has dealt with this problem in an examination of Homeyer's theory that marks were originally runic forms, and he expresses the opinion that, assuming this to be true of certain types of marks, "they lost their character at an early period and were regarded merely as signs or symbols not as letters of an alphabet." As regards "pictorial marks," he holds that the similarity to various objects is accidental. If so, this is rather in favour of Homeyer's derivation of marks from runes, the forms in some cases being identical. Moreover, as Homeyer notes, "signa" for identifying cattle, horses, trees, clothes, and as boundary marks, are referred to in the Lex Salica, the Edictum Rotharis, and the Anglo-Saxon laws, so that we have here something like a pedigree of the custom. RURAL CHAPTER XVII RUS IN URBE