The BEAR’S HEAD occurs in Congleton, Cheshire; probably it is a family crest, the same as the BEAR’S PAW,--both of which, it is believed, occur only in that county and in Lancashire. The Bear is also met in frequent combinations; one of the most common is the BEAR AND BACCHUS, which looks like a hieroglyphic rendering of the words Beer and Wine, having the additional attraction of alliteration. Since mythology does not mention a Beer-God, the animal was probably chosen as a rebus for the drink. In the BEAR AND RUMMER, Mortimer Street, the rummer implies the sale of liquors, in the same manner as the Punchbowl is often used. The BEAR AND HARROW seems to be a union of two signs. In the seventeenth century it formed the house-decoration of an ordinary at the entrance of Butcher Row, (now Picket Street, Strand.) One night in 1692, Nat Lee, the mad poet, in going home drunk from this house, fell down in the snow and was stifled. The Elephant, in the middle ages, was nearly always represented with the castle on his back. For instance, in the Latin MS., Bestiarium Harl., 4751, a tower is strapped to him, in which are seen five knights in chain-armour, with swords, battle-axes, and cross-bows, their emblazoned shields hanging round the battlements; and, in the description of the animal, it is said, “In eorum dorsis, P[er] si et Indi ligneis turribus collocati tamquam de muro jaculis dimicant.” The rook, in Chinese chess-boards, still represents an elephant thus armed. Cutlers in the last century frequently used the ELEPHANT AND CASTLE as their sign, on account of it being the crest of the Cutlers’ Company, who had adopted it in reference to the ivory used in the trade. Hence the stone bas-relief in Belle Sauvage Yard, which was the sign of some now forgotten shopkeeper, who had chosen it out of regard to his landlords. The houses in the yard are the property of the Cutlers’ Company. The ELEPHANT AND CASTLE public-house, Newington Butts, was formerly a famous coaching inn, but, by the introduction of railways, it has dwindled down to a starting-point for omnibuses. The occasion of this sign being put up was the following:--Some time about 1714, a Mr Conyers, an apothecary in Fleet Street, and a great collector of antiquities, was digging in a gravel-pit in a field near the Fleet, not far from Battle Bridge, when he discovered the skeleton of an elephant. A spear with a flint head, fixed to a shaft of goodly length, was found near it, whence it was conjectured to have been killed by the British in a fight with the Romans,[204] though now, since the late discoveries concerning the flint implements, very different conclusions would be drawn from this fact. But be this as it may, that elephant, whether post-tertiary or Roman, gave its name to the public-house soon after erected in that locality; and, regardless of the venerable antiquity of this origin, it is often now-a-days jocularly degraded into the PIG AND TINDER-BOX.