together with the full charge vpon y Purser, and an exact state of the acc' between themselves, and him for caske, hoopes, biskett baggs, &c., all which Provicons, caske, hoopes, biskett baggs, &c, soe returned shall bee disposed of by ye s" Comm" to their Ma" best advantage, such part thereof as vpon due survey made of y' same shall be found sound, sweete, wholesome, and fitting for their Ma" service to be issued againe either for sea or harbour Victualling, for which the same shall bee found most proper, and the remainder thereof which shall be found defective, to bee sold at the best rates y' may be procured for the same, and for prevention of any disputes, touching the number of staves, of which each sort of the caske shall bee reputed to consist in their returnes, which his Mas Pursers are obliged to make thereof. It is hereby declared, that each of ye butts soe to bee returned, if shaken, shall consist of noe less than twenty-six staves, and every barrell seaventeene staves (the heading included,) whereof two pieces of each to be accounted a staffe, allways accounting each staffe about forty-five inches long for a butt staffe, each staffe of thirty-eight inches long if ye same bee of old stufe to bee reckoned for a punchion staffe, and the like for every staffe betweene thirty-eight and forty-four inches long, and each staffe above thirty-two inches long unto thirty-eight, including allso y thirty-eight inches, if it bee a new staffe to bee reckoned to a hogshead, and each staffe under thirty-two inches long, as low as twenty eight inches to be reckoned as a barrell staffe.

12. That the s Comm" are allso to take care to pay all Bills of Exchaing which shall be drawne by the Command and Pursers for Victualls, provided for any of their Ma's shipps abroad in ports where noe Victualls shall have beene order'd to bee provided, when the necessity of their Ma" service shall requier the taking vp of Victualls, in the s" ports, as allso that they defray y charge of the freight of all such Provicons as shall at any time bee order'd to attend their Ma! fleete, or to bee sent to any of their Ma" ships abroad, or at home, to provide such water shipps for the service of the s" fleete, as shall bee directed to bee taken vp, to pay such bills as shall bee made out, and assigned vpon them by the Navy Board for the ballancing of any Victualling Accounts, and sattisfie all other expenses whatsoever relating to the Victualling of the Navy, that so the whole charge thereof may appeare in that Office.

13. They are to take care that no beere bee issued for Victualling their Ma shipps in any port where a sworne guager is to be had, in other caske then what shall by such sworne guager have its contents in gallons (Winchester measure) marked on the head of it, and that all other caske of Provicons have the contents of the Provicons in each caske marked on the head thereof by the same person (that can if there shall bee occasion) testifie vpon oath that there is in the said caske the quantity marked by him on the head thereof. They are allso to take care that ye beefe and porke which they shall at any time Victuall their Ma" ships weh shall allways hold at such weight, as y' every twenty-eight pieces of beefe cut for fower pound pieces, tooke out of the caske as they rise, and the salt shaken off it shall weigh one hundred pound nett averdupoize. NO. 9-VOL. XVII.

3 Q

weigh of every fifty-six pieces of bacon, or salt pork, cut for two pound pieces, and tooke out of its caske, and shaken as in ye beef, shall weigh one hundred and fower pounds nett averdupoize. After wch method vpon the weighing of a whole caske of the said beefe or porke, in ye presence of two or more of the Warr Offics of the shipp, the certificate of the sd Offics such as they shall bee ready to make oath to, shall in case of shortness of weight, not only impower the Purser to make allowance to the seamen in money or victualls att the next Victualling port for such shortness, but oblige the sd Comm", their Deputies, Ministers, Assigns, to make present satisfaction to the Purser without delay in the next Victualling port where it shall bee demanded.

14. They are to take care y no beefe provided and put on board their Ma" shipps shall be delivered in pieces of any other weights then of fower pounds, nor porke then of two pounds of averdupoize weight in each piece, and that at no time there shall bee any unusuall pieces put with the other flesh, or apart for the vse of the shipps companies, such as legg bones, shins of oxen, or the cheekes of hoggs, or oxęhearts, &c.

vp

15. The said Comm" may, if they find it for their Mats service, issue to the seamen serving on board their Mats ships in Ordinary, three pounds of beefe in liew of two pounds of porke for the months of May, June, July, and August.

16. The said Comm's nor any of them, nor any other person or persons on their, or any of their behalfes, either directly or indirectly, are not any manner of way to be interested or concerned in selling of victualls, or any stores, necessaries, or utensils whatsover, for ye service of the Victualling, or in any benefitt or advantage wh may arrise thereby, as they will answer the contrary at their perrills.

17. They are to manage the service to the best advantage of their Ma" in all the particulars thereof, according to their best skill, judg ment and direction, and to stand accomptable to their Ma" as well for the provideing of good, sound, and wholesome Provicons for the health and sattisfaction of the seamen serving in their Ma's shipps and fleete as that the whole service shall be managed with all possible frugallity, and good husbandry on their Ma" behalfes.

THE ANTIQUITY OF WIGS.

WE have to day devoted a larger space than we are accustomed to allow such things, to some papers read before the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society a week since, and trust that the interest of the subjects discussed by them will excuse us for what we have done. The discoveries of Brunoff and Rawlinson, are only second in interest and importance to those of Young and Champellion; and the reliefs on the Nimroud marbles do more than those on the Egyptian monuments themselves, so far as they extend, to illustrate the manners and customs of the extraordinary people to whom they respectively refer The luxury of the court of Persia, in the times of Darius Hystaspes, has long been proverbial: it was the wonder of the writers of the most luxurious nations of antiquity; and here we have before us delineations of the costumes, and pictures of the men who went to war, with

483

divisions of cooks, cup-bearers, and garland-makers, considered indispensable in the army, as fresh after the lapse of twenty-five centuries, as if not a twelvemonth from the sculptor's hands.

On the present occasion, we, of Bombay, have the good fortune to have specimens or casts of some of the most interesting of the relics referred to amongst us; and, as all the remainder, which will be sent to England, are likely to pass our way, and will, we trust, be copied in their passage, we shall have the means of procuring subjects of study of the utmost interest and attractiveness; and such as few out of London enjoy. The subject of the paper adverted to, is the Nimroud Obelisk, lately sent home by the brig Jumnu, which, containing upwards of 150 neatly sculptured figures, furnished a sort of collection in itself, in miniature, of much of what is detailed on the larger stones. It is well known, though it is not the less a very remarkable fact in history, that the greatest national improvements have generally been borrowed by conquerors from those they conquered. Taste and elegance were first introduced into Roman eloquence and architecture from the Greeks they had subjugated; and the barbarians, who overran the empire, benefited more from Roman improvements than did the communities the Romans had conquered.

The introduction of Saracenic or Gothic architecture and art, were the only things we gained by the Crusades: and here, we have before us a case of gathering instruction from a vanquished enemy, more striking, perhaps, than any the history of the world records. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, overran Egypt in the year 530, before Christ. He killed the god Aphis, and destroyed their temples; when desirous of capturing the Pelusium he placed cats and dogs at the head of his army, knowing that the Egyptians would not injure those they considered divinities. A large number of captives were carried away by the army of the conquerer, who, though spurning the divinities, and violating the temples of the conquered, seems to have bene fited by their learning, and to have copied their customs, and even their dress. Few things could more have astonished the world than the discovery a few years since, of full-bottomed wigs in the catacombs, and yet specimens of these are preserved, both in the British and Berlin Museums. such as would have required little at the hands of a Caxon to make them fit for the head of an Oldbuck. But it is now found out that if wigs be now rarities in Egypt, they had, at one time, been common enough, and that the natives, almost universally, not only adorned their heads, but their chins, with artificial hair. The Egyptians were the most persevering of shavers; they left not a hair either on crown or chin, and they despised and abhorred the Greeks, who neglected the razor; but they adorned the parts denuded with far richer crinal ornaments than those they removed, and replaced them by knotted wigs and beards, with depending tails and peaks, such as Nature never could have supplied.

This brings us back to the Nimroud Sculptures, in which, nearly all the figures are provided with wigs and beards, obviously artificial, to which those of the Egyptians, from whom they were borrowed, were as nothing in size and gorgeousness. The beard of the king was in Egypt sometimes four inches long, and was square at the extremity: the beards of all the Assyrian marbles are from eight to fourteen inches in length. It must be remembered that, nearly all the Nimroud marbles refer to the reign of Darius Hystaspes, the immediate successor of Cambyses, celebrated in classic history for his defeat at Marathon; and that the evidence that the bead-gear referred to was borrowed from the Egyptians, rests, first on its perfect identity, and second, on the absence from all drawings and sculptures of early date, out of Egypt, of any representations of such things as these, and the silence of

ancient authors regarding them. Beyond Egypt and Assyria, indeed we should imagine the fashion alluded to never to have extended, and in all like lihood in the latter country it existed only for a season; and it is most singular that while the Greek, the Roman and the Jewish writers described with minuteness almost every article of arms or attire employed or worn by the people of whom they write, decorations so very remarkable, as the artificial beard of the Persians should nowhere be noticed. Now, for the first time, do we become accquainted with the attire of the most luxurious court of the age in which it existed.

Our theatrical critics of the present day laugh at the idea of the representatives of Cato and Mark Antony, appearing on the stage, in full-bottomed wigs; in any drama referring to the history of Persia, of the age of Belshazzar, the costumes of the characters would have been incomplete without them. A Bactrian coin with a Greek inscription, was laid on the table of the Society, along with casts of the marbles, and singular it was, most certainly, that a Greek ruler was here found to have adopted the artificial wig and beard, for the repudiation of which they were so much despised by the Egyptians. The appearance of a parasol on a sculpture two thousand years old, has nothing, perhaps, in it very remarkable, excepting it be the circumstance of its perfect similitude to the large parasols used in India at the present time. The Egyptian delineations more resemble the feather flabella carried behind the Pope, than the parasols now most familiar

to us.

Xenophon mentions wigs as having been common at the court of Persia in the time of Cyrus the Great; and Elian also adverts to the matter. Livy states that they were common in France. Juvenal and Martial notice the wearing of them amongst the roués of Rome. Our correspondent adds that the visitors of the Italian galleries will recollect many busts with wigs on, detached from the head. "Wigs also," continues the writer, "were much used in Bhuddist times, and the pictures at Ajanta provide excellent representations of the full bottomed wig." We must at once admit that, the allusions of the parties just named to wigs, as existing in Persia, Greece, or Rome, had escaped our recollection altogether. With the exception of the notices we quoted above, we were unable to find any allusion at all to wigs, as worn by the ancients. On looking over the very interesting work "On the history of Perriwigs, with an account of their origin, use, form, and abuses," we find a number of notices of them so remarkable, that we shall give some of them, for the amusement of the reader.

Our author states, that according to Rangone, principal of the college of Berlin, false hair was first made use of by the ladies, and that the flagatious example thus set, was followed by the men. There is an ungallant saying, that there never was mischief yet but that a priest or a woman was at the bottom of it; and here the priest lays the blame of wigs on women, to whom,

We subjoin the title as it stands in the Italian; we do not recollect even so much as to have heard of the learned Bovicelli, until his work on wigs was placed in our hands:

Istoria delle Perruche, in cui si fa vedere La loro origine, la usanza, la forma, l'abuso, e la irrogolarita di quelle degli Ecclesiastici. Tradotta dal Francese per ordine dell' Eminentiss. Arcivesco vo Orfini Vescovo Tusculano, or a Vescovo di Porto. D. A. Giuliano Bovicelli, Priore della S. Basilica, S. Bartolomeo, gia Segretario di S. Eminenza. Dedicata All Illustriss e Reverendiss. Signore Mons, Sarnelli Vescovo di Bisegija. Non amat falsum auctor veritatis; adulterium est apud illum omne, quod fingitur; Tert. lib. de Spectac. cap. 25.Benevento Nella Stamperia Arcivescovale 1722.

if the clergy are to be believed, we owe all the mischief the world contains. The creed of the laity luckily lies somewhat in the opposite direction, and considers the world not worth having without women. The general reader will scarcely be prepared for the assurance quoted by our author, as given by a theologian of Lovaine, whose authority he accepts as unquestionable, that the earliest allusion we have to wigs is to be found in the 3rd chapter of Isaiah, and the 17th verse, where are the words, "The Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion," meaning that the Jewish ladies should be exposed, by having their wigs taken off. Clearchus, the disciple of Aristotle, assures us, it seems, that the Iapigiian girls of evil fame were, in their own country, the introducers of the wigs which they were compelled to assume when their wicked courses, prematurely denuded them of their hair. Xenophon mentions wigs as common at the court of Cyrus the Great, a statement materially affecting the theory that they were brought from Egypt by the prisoners of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. They were, at this time, also common in Medea, as well as Persia. Aristotle mentions that the Lieutenant-General of Mousolo, had orders from his chief to collect a huge quantity of hair from the heads of the Greeks, he being willing to accept of this instead of tribute, for the purpose of having it manufactured into wigs. What was asked was most willingly conceded, and a large amount of obligation thus very conveniently discharged.

It is very obvious, indeed, that in a nation where the whole community shaved their heads, and wore wigs and artificial beards from early youth, that the difficulty of finding the raw material for this species of manufacture, must often have been very embarrassing; and the contributions from foreign parts must have been eminently desirable. The spoils of the heads of the long-haired Greeks, must have been very acceptable to their bald-headed neighbours when they could be come by. Unhappily for the wig-makers, their office was a good deal of a tartar catching sort of a process. Marathon

could bear witness, that the Persians, who went in quest of hair, in this direction, were considerably worse off than the wool-gatherers, who return home shorn; they sought for materials to cover their heads, and lost their heads in the adventure.

Titus Livius, it seems, assures us, that the great captain of the age, General Hannibal, wore a wig of brown hair, to conceal his years, and that, to disguise himself from the swords of the Gallic chiefs, he sometimes changed his clothes, sometimes his wig; a practice still occasionally resorted to by robbers, on a smaller scale, when averse to attracting attention in their own character. Ovid recommends some of his fair frail friends, who stand in need of extra covering for their scalps, to purchase golden, red, or yellow hair from the Germans, and shine amongst Roman ladies in borrowed colours. Juvenal mentions that Messalina, mis ress of the emperor Claudius, had her own dark tresses removed, and in their place put on a wig of golden hue. Martial speaks of the sandy hue of the wigs of Germany, having their effect heightened by being sprinkled with gold. This practice was said to have been resorted to by the emperor Nero himself. The satirist speaks of the sudden change of the hue of hair, from the colour of the swan, to that of the crow, so cunningly brought about, as to cheat any one but Proserpine would play the deuce with them, pull off the meretricious curls, and leave the real person undisguised; and he twits the lady Lilia, that, having purchased hair and teeth, she could not provide herself with artificial or borrowed

eyes.

The reader will probably think this enough; it still was nothing half so strange to find wigs occasionally worn, as to find, as we do in ancient Egypt and Assyria, a whole bewigged population. The work of Bovicelli, is not