being “Flying Bulls.”[58] There can be no doubt, therefore, that the FLY AND BULLOCK originally represented one of the FLYING BULLOCKS in the Butchers’ Arms. It seems, moreover, that the sign does after all represent the winged ox of St. Luke, that Evangelist being, in a way, the Patron Saint of butchers, for in Chambers’s _Book of Days_ (ii. p. 464) it is stated this symbol has been associated with St. Luke, “because, to quote the words of an ancient writer, ‘he deviseth about the presthode of Jesus Christ,’ the ox or calf being the sign of a sacrifice, and St. Luke entering more largely than the other Evangelists into the history of the life and sufferings of our Saviour.” The BLUE BOAR is, perhaps, the most interesting of all our Essex signs. At present it occurs five times in the county--namely, at *Prittlewell, *Maldon, *Colchester, *Stratford, and Abridge. The two first-named houses have been in existence at least a century, as they are mentioned in advertisements in the _Chelmsford Chronicle_ in 1786 and 1788 respectively, while the last-named is marked on Greenwood’s Map of Essex, published in 1824. Forty years ago there was another example of the sign at Stanford Rivers, and Mr. H. W. King informs the author that the house at Hadleigh, now known as the CASTLE, displayed the sign of the BLUE BOAR until late in the last century. Taylor (see p. 28) mentions another BLUE BOAR at Ilford in 1636. In 1789, too, there was one at Fyfield. In the year 1750, a BLUE BOAR’S HEAD Inn existed opposite the Church at Waltham Abbey. Mr. Charles Golding, of Colchester, in writing to _Notes and Queries_[59] to inquire the latest date at which bull-baiting is known to have taken place in England, mentions that an entertainment of this kind was announced, in an old advertisement that he had seen, to take place at the above house on Whitsun Monday, 1750, and “any gentleman bringing a dog should be entertained at a dinner free.” The same house is referred to in an entry in the parish registers in 1647, when 12s. 6d. was “paid for a dinner at the Borsehed when the ould Churchwardens gave up their accounts.” The sign of the BOAR’S HEAD occurs at East Horndon, *Braintree, and *Dunmow. The first of these houses appeared in the list forty years ago as the OLD BOAR’S HEAD. Our houses of this name have, perhaps, been named after the famous BOAR’S HEAD tavern which used to exist in Eastcheap, or they may have had a separate origin. As to the derivation of the sign itself, Larwood and Hotten are inclined to believe that it represents the boar’s head as formerly often brought to table, rather than a charge taken from some one’s arms; but, in this, it is difficult altogether to agree with them. A boar’s head forms part of the arms of the Butchers’ Company (p. 34), and we have had in Essex several families bearing the same charge in their arms, such as the Borehams of Haverhill, the Welbores of Clavering, and the Tyrrells,