THE SECRETARIES' REPORT. 
XV 
ensigns in connection with the apostles, in what was pre-eminently 
an age of symbolisms. The distinction between the arms of the 
Sees of Winchester and Exeter has been exhaustively and 
successfully treated by Mrs. Halliday in her privately -printed 
work on The Courtenay Mantelpiece. The Priory of Plympton 
possessed a large portion of Plymouth at an early period, and 
until its dissolution by Henry VIII. retained certain rights and 
jurisdictions therein. Below the coat of Woollcombe we have the 
older arms of Plymouth, which are so given in the Heralds' 
Visitation of 1574; to the left we have the arms of De Redvers, 
the early Earls of Devon, and to the right the arms generally 
assumed to be those of the county of Cornwall. We are thus 
shown by whom the Institution was founded, and the town in 
which it has its home ; while the two counties are indicated by 
the shields on either side of Woollcombe. In the spaces between 
the shields we find a Cornish chough to represent Natural 
History ; a palette and brushes stand for Art ; a scroll, ink-horn, 
and pen attest that Literature and Science are not forgotten ; 
while a cromlech shows that the antiquities of the West of 
England receive attention from the Members." 
The Curator of the Library reports : 
" During the past year an attempt has been made to recover lost 
ground in the matter of binding. Many volumes of periodical 
literature have been bound, but a great many remain in paper 
covers, which, as they cannot be put on the shelves, are of 
course of little service to our Members. 
" A very important gift has been made to the Institution during 
the past few weeks. Thanks to the efforts of the Earl of Mount 
Edgcumbe, the committee appointed by the Lords Commissioners 
of Her Majesty's Treasury invited an application from the Society 
for a grant of the publications issued under the direction of the 
Master of the Rolls. Mr. Worth was good enough to indicate 
what volumes would be especially desirable, and the result has 
been that no less than seventy-four volumes of Calendars, 150 
volumes of Chronicles, and thirty folio and other volumes of the 
Record Commissioners' publications have been presented. There 
is but one condition attached to the donation — if by any chance 
it should happen that the Institution should cease to exist, or if the 
books are at any time no longer required for permanent preservation 
