* * * * *
Minor Notes.
_Egg and Arrow Ornament._--Mr. Ruskin, in his _Stones of Venice_, vol. i.
p. 305., says--
"The Greek egg and arrow cornice is a nonsense cornice, very noble in
its lines, but utterly absurd in its meaning. Arrows have had nothing
to do with eggs (at least since Leda's time), neither are the so-called
arrows like arrows, nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like
honeysuckles: they are all conventionalized into a monotonous
successiveness of nothing--pleasant to the eye, useless to the
thought."
The ornament of which Mr. R. thus speaks is indifferently called egg and
tongue, egg and dart, as well as egg and arrow. It seems to me that the
_egg_ is a complete misnomer, although common to all the designations; and
I fancy that the idea of what is so called was originally derived from the
full-length shield, and therefore that the ornament should be named the
_shield and dart_, an association more reasonable than is suggested by any
of the ordinary appellations. Can any of {350} your correspondents offer
any confirmation of this?