A writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine," 1746, says: "In June, 1718, as I was walking in the fields, I stopt in Clerkenwell church-yard to see a grave-digger at work. He had dug pretty deep, and was come to a coffin which had lain so long that it was quite rotten, and the plate eaten so with rust that he could not read anything of the inscription. In cleaning away the rotten pieces of wood, the grave-digger found an hour-glass close to the left side of the skull, with sand in it, the wood of which was so rotten that, it broke where he took hold of it. Being a lover of antiquity, I bought it of him, and made a drawing of it as it then appeared. Some time after, mentioning this affair in company of some antiquarians, they told me that it was an ancient custom to put an hour-glass into the coffin as an emblem of the sand of life being run out; others conjectured that little hour-glasses were anciently given at funerals, like rosemary, and by the friends of the dead put in the coffin or thrown into the grave." _Macduff's Cross._ The law of Clan Macduff was a privilege of immunity for homicide anciently enjoyed by those who could claim kindred with Macduff, Earl of Fife, within the ninth degree. Macduff's cross stood on the march or boundary between Fife and Strathearn, above Newburg. Any homicide possessed of the right of clanship who could reach it, and who gave nine kye (cows) and a clopindash (a young cow) was free of the slaughter committed by him. _Woman's Cleverness._ It is a singular fact that on one occasion the lives of thousands of the Irish Protestants were saved by a clever device of a woman.