PUBLIC BUSINESS. 



Dr. Inman exhibited an iron nail partly enclosed in a piece 

 of concrete, from the vicinity of Blackpool. The rock from 

 which it was taken was small in extent, evidently recent, and 

 produced by the percolation of water, impregnated with car- 

 bonate of lime, through the sand and shingle. It was covered 

 by every tide, and the only singularity respecting it was, that 

 it had a dip of about 30 degrees from north to south, and at 

 right angles with the shore and prevailing winds. 



The Paper for the evening was entitled — . 



" A sketch of that branch of Literature called Books of 

 Emblems, as it flourished during the \§th and Ylth centu- 

 ries, by Joseph Brooks Yates, Esq. 



' Fallor an et radios hinc qnocjiie Phoebus habet ? — Milto.ni ec. 

 PART J. 



" In all languages there are found examples of words, which 

 in the lapse of time, from a variety of causes, convey to the 

 mind an impression altogether different from their original 

 meaning, and even from that to which their derivation would 

 obviously lead. The word Emblem presents one of the most 

 remarkable of these instances. Its present signification, ' Type 

 or allusive representation/ is of comparatively modern use, 

 while its original meaning is become obsolete. Among the 

 Greeks an Emblem (e/x/3A.r?/xa) derived from ei>/3aAAeii>, meant 

 something thrown in or inserted, either after the fashion of 

 what we now call Marquetry and Mosaic work, or in the form 

 of a detached ornament to be affixed to a pillar, a tablet, or a 

 vase, and put off or on, as there might be occasion. Pliny, in 

 his Natural History,* mentions an artist called Pytheus, who 

 executed works of this last description in silver, one of which, 



* Hist. Nat., Hook 33, c. 12. 



