_Ring Dials_.--I was interested with the reference to _Pocket Sun-dials_ in
"NOTES AND QUERIES," pp. 52. 107. because it re-furnished an opportunity of
placing in print a scrap of information on the subject, which I neglected
to embrace when I first read MR. KNIGHT'S note on the passage in
Shakspeare. About seventy years ago these small, cheap, brass "Ring-dials"
for the pocket were manufactured by the gross by a firm in Sheffield
(Messrs. Proctor), then in Milk street. I well remember the workman--an old
man in my boyhood--who had been employed in making them, as he said, "in
basketsful;" and also his description of the _modus operandi_, which was
curious enough. They were of different sizes and prices, and their extreme
rarity at present, considering the number formerly in use, is only less
surprising than the commonness of pocket-watches which have superseded
them. I never saw but one of these cheapest and most nearly forgotten
horologia, and which the old brass-turner, as I recollect, boasted of as
"telling the time true to a quarter of an hour!"