marks, for which I have been indebted to Mr. Edw. Conder, jun, Upper Warden for the present year (1893), are taken from the account books of the Worshipful Company of Masons of the City of London.

This list, though short, embraces, I believe, all the marks now to be found in the books of the Masons' Company. They are not entered in a mark-book, as in the Scotch lodges mentioned above, but are scattered through the records, in place of the signatures of their owners. There does not appear to be any evidence of the manner in which the members of the Company obtained their marks. They are interesting as showing the survival of certain forms. Some appear to be attempts to represent the initial letters of names, and perhaps it is worth remarking that it is the christian name which is selected. In the first, James Gilder, the main line of the mark may be a rude representation of the letter J: Thomas Priestman's mark resembles a T, and that of Henry Padgett is the letter H.

In the five plates of Cheshire and Lancashire marks will be found 1140 marks. Over one thousand of these may be classed together as older marks, and about eighty are modern. For a knowledge of these I have been indebted to the kindness of friends, very few of them having been even seen by myself. Some of the originals are naturally very distinct, whereas others are quite the reverse, but every effort has been made to represent them correctly. For a number of notes on the various buildings I have to thank Mr. E. W. Cox, many of whose remarks I have embodied in the following list. Indeed I may say that without his kind assistance in arranging and dating the marks, I should have been quite unable to offer the Society so complete a series from the two counties.

In order to render the plates more useful, I have added the dates, and a number of notes of the parts of the buildings in which the marks are to