A Corner of Brittany. 10i$ 
At the base of the tower on either side of the entrance one sees 
at right and left bas-reliefs ascribed to the fourteenth century, repre- 
senting the Passion and Resurrection of the Savior, while above the 
entrance is one of the most interesting bas-reliefs of all the sculp- 
tures of Roscoff, a ship of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, carved 
in stone with scrupulous exactness. This ship is found on the walls 
of the church and on the hospital situated on the way to Saint Poll 
and seems to be the coat-of-arms of the city. Its bizarre shape, re- 
calling the old ship of the corsaires is of very great arch^ological 
or, at all events, historical interest. 
The church itself is surrounded by a low wall enclosing many 
trees. On either side of the main entrance there are two small 
buildings one ornamented with a bas-relief of the ancient ship ; the 
other a small mortuary chapel. These are ossuaires which in old 
times served for receptacles of the dead. When the church-yard 
was full, these buildings received the overflow. Their little niches 
are now empty, but they still remain mute remnants of the man- 
ners and customs of a time not long past. 
In the neighboring city of Saint Pol, however, we find the ossu- 
aires in the cemetery still occupied by the little boxes in each of 
which is a human cranium, and around the altar of the church in the 
same place, we find similar relics of the dead. In the cemetery of 
Saint Pol these ossuaires are small buildings with covered shelves 
along which is seen a row of boxes each resembling a dove cot with 
a roof-shaped top. Each box has a small opening, diamond or heart- 
shaped, through which the skull of some old inhabitant can be 
seen, and each box bears the name of the dead. Around the altar 
of the church these boxes are arranged in a melancholy row. " It is 
considered an honor," said the father who showed me about, " to 
have the head thus preserved near the altar, an honor which only a 
few and those the most influential are permitted to share. 
This survival of a habit of burial once widely spread in Brittany 
and France is archseologically very interesting, but at the present 
day the custom is wholly given up. 
The church of Notre-Dame de Croatz-Batz with its interesting 
ossuaires may be called an historic monument of France and is an 
instructive relic of times long past, but there is another church, 
now m ruins at Roscoff, which also merits our attention. This is 
one of the few places of this distant town connected with the gene- 
ral history of France. Nothing now remains of this chapel but the 
