latter, indeed, is a very common tobacconist’s sign at the present day. A WOODEN PAIL occurs on the token issued in Moulsham in 1666 by Thomas Joyce, who was perhaps a cooper, and a BUNDLE OF YARN on that of “Iohn Hance of Kelvedon, clothier, 1669.” At Epping a large KETTLE, painted red and suspended before a house, indicates that tea and hot water are obtainable within. There still remain to be noticed several signs which are in use at the present day, though they are not public-house signs. Several such have already been alluded to, as, for instance, the BLACK BOY and the TOBACCO ROLL for a tobacconist, and the BUNCH OF GRAPES for a vintner. The COW or a CALF, too, forms the recognized sign of a dairyman. At Witham a harness-maker displays a harnessed HORSE’S HEAD, life-size, as his sign. Many similar instances of tradesmen, other than publicans, displaying signs indicative of their trades might be named throughout the county. Few public-house signs, however, are more familiar than the THREE GOLDEN BALLS displayed by pawnbrokers. The device is a truly heraldic one, the balls being taken, according to Messrs. Larwood and Hotten (p. 128), from-- “The lower part of the coat of arms of the Dukes of Medici, from whose states, and from Lombardy, nearly all the early bankers came. These capitalists also advanced money on valuable goods, and hence gradually became pawnbrokers. The arms of the Medicis family were _five besants azure_, whence the balls formerly were blue, and only within the last half century have assumed a golden exterior, evidently to gild the pill for those who have dealings with ‘my uncle’: as for the position in which they are placed, the popular explanation is that there are two chances to one that whatever is brought there will not be redeemed.” According to the same authors (p. 341), the BARBER’S POLE dates from the time when barbers practised phlebotomy: the patient undergoing this operation had to grasp the pole in order to make the blood flow more freely. This use of the pole is illustrated in more than one illuminated MS. As the pole was, of course, liable to be stained with blood, it was painted red: when not in use barbers were in the habit of suspending it outside the door with the white linen swathing-bands twisted round it; this, in later times, gave rise to the pole being painted red and white, or black and white, or even with red, white, and blue lines winding round it. The POLE was also once a tooth-drawer’s sign. In some cases, too, it is probable that it was intended punningly to indicate the fact that the barber who displayed it attended to the needs of peoples’ polls. Presumably it formed the sign of Roger Giles, who is said to have circulated the following amusing advertisement in the neighbourhood of Romford:--