from tliis fing’er to the Iieart. Wheatley, on the authority of the Mis- 
sals, calls it a vein : “ It is,” says he, “ because from thence there 
proceeds a particular vein to the heart. This, indeed, (he adds,) is 
now contradicted by experience; but several eminent authors, as 
well Gentiles as Christians, as well physicians as divines, were for- 
merly of this opinion, and therefore they thought this finger the pro- 
perest to bear the pledge of love, that from thence it might be con- 
veyed, as it were, to the heart.” 
Rings appear to have been given away formerly at W'eddings. In 
Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 280, we read, in the account 
of the famous philosopher of queen Elizabeth’s days, Edward Kelley, 
“ Kelley, who was openly profuse beyond the modest limits of a^ober 
philosopher, did give away in gold wire rings, (or rings twisted with 
three gold wires,) at the marriage of one of his maid-servants, t® the 
value of 40001.” This was in 1589, atTrebona. 
Christening Customs. — The learned Dr. Moresin informs us of a 
remarkable custom, which he himself was an eye-witness of in Scot- 
land : They take, says he, on their return from church, the newly bap- 
tized infant, and vibrate it three or four times gently over a flame, 
saying, and repeating it thrice, “ Let the flame consume thee now or 
never.” — Grose tells us there is a superstition that a child who does 
not cry in baptism will not live. He has added,another idea equally 
well founded, that children prematurely wise are not long lived, that 
is, rarely reach maturity ; a notion which we find quoted by Shak- 
speare, and put into the mouth of Richard the Third. — It appears to 
have been anciently the custom at christening entertainments, for the 
guests not only to eat as much as they pleased, but also, for the 
ladies at least, to carry away as much as they liked in their pockets. 
Hutchinson, in his History of Northumberland, tells us that children 
in that country, when first sent abroad in the arms of the nurse, to 
visit a neighbour, are presented with an egg, salt, and fine bread. It 
ivas anciently the custom for the sponsors at Christenings to offer 
gilt spoons as presents to the child ; these spoon were called Apostle 
Spoons, because the figures of the twelve apostles were chased or 
carved on the tops of the handles. Opulent sponsors gave the whole 
twelve ; those in middling circumstances gave four ; and the poorer 
sort contented themselves with the gift of one, exhibiting the figure of 
any saint, in honour of whom the child received its name. — Brand's 
popular Antiquities. 
NUMEROUS FAMILIES OF CHILDREN. 
In the genealogical history of Tuscany, writteti by Gamarini, men- 
tion is made of a nobleman of Sienna, named Pichi, who by three 
wives had had one hundred and fifty children ; and that, being sent am- 
bassador to the pope and the emperor, he had forty-eight of his sous in 
his retinue. In a monument in the church-yard of St. Innocent, at Paris, 
erected to a woman who died at eighty- eight years of age, it is re- 
tjorded that she might have seen 288 children directly issued from 
hef. But children here evidently includes grand-children, &c. &c. 
Hakewell relates of Mrs. Honeywood, a gentlewoman of Kent^ who 
