In the choirs of cathedral and conventual churches, and in the chancels of some other churches, a movable desk, at which the epistle and gospel were read, was placed: this was often called the eagle desk, from its being frequently sustained on a brazen eagle with expanded wings, elevated on a stand, emblematic of St. John the evangelist. Eagle desks are generally found either of the fifteenth or seventeenth century; notices of them occur, however, much earlier. In the Louterell Psalter, written circa A. D. 1300, an eagle desk supported on a cylindrical shaft, banded midway down by an annulated moulding in the style of the thirteenth century, is represented; and in an account of ornaments belonging to Salisbury Cathedral, A. D. 1214, we find mentioned _Tuellia una ad Lectricum Aquilæ_. Besides the brass eagle desks which still remain in use in several of our cathedrals, and in the chapels of some of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, fine specimens are preserved in Redcliffe Church, Bristol, of the date 1638; in Croydon Church, Surrey; and in the church of the Holy Trinity at Coventry; other instances might also be enumerated. Sometimes we meet with ancient brass reading-desks which have not the eagle in front, but both the sides are sloped so as to form a double desk: of these, examples of the fifteenth century may be found in Yeovil Church, Somersetshire, and in the chapel of Merton College, Oxford. Ancient wooden reading-desks, either single or double, are also occasionally found; some of these are richly carved, others are comparatively plain, but all partake more or less of the architectonic style of the age in which they were severally constructed, and from which their probable dates may be ascertained. In Bury Church, Huntingdonshire, is a wooden desk with a single slope, and the vertical face presented in front is covered with arches and other carved ornaments: this perhaps may be referable to the latter part of the fourteenth century. A rich double desk, of somewhat later date, with the shaft supported by buttresses of open-work tracery, is preserved in Ramsey Church, Huntingdonshire. In Aldbury Church, Hertfordshire, is an ancient double lecturn or reading desk, of wood, of the fifteenth century, much plainer in design than those at Bury and Ramsey; the shaft is angular, with small buttresses at the angles, and with a plain angular-shaped moulded capital and base, which latter is set on a cross-tree. In Hawstead Church, Suffolk, is a wooden desk with little ornament, supported on an angular shaft with an embattled capital, and moulded base with leaves carved in relief: this is apparently of the latter part of the fourteenth century. The ancient wooden desks found in some of our churches must not, however, be confounded with a more numerous class constructed and used subsequent to the Reformation.