_Touchstone's Dial._--Mr. Knight, in a note on _As You Like It_, gives us
the description of a dial presented to him by a friend who had picked it
"out of a deal of old iron," and which he supposes to be such a one as the
"fool i' the forest" drew from his poke, and looked on with lacklustre eye.
It is very probable that this species of chronometer is still in common use
in the sister kingdom; for my brother mentions to me that, when at school
in Ireland some fifteen or sixteen years since, he had seen one of those
"_ring-dials_" in the possession of one of his schoolfellows: and Mr.
Carleton, in his amusing _Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, thus
describes them:--
"The ring-dial was the hedge-schoolmaster's next best substitute for a
watch. As it is possible that a great number of our readers may never
have heard of--much less seen one, we shall in a word or two describe
it--nothing indeed could be more simple. It was a bright brass ring,
about three quarters of an inch broad, and two inches and a half in
diameter. There was a small hole in it, which, when held opposite the
sun, admitted the light against the inside of the ring behind. On this
were marked the hours and the quarters, and the time was known by
observing the hour or the quarter on which the slender ray, that came
in from the hole in front, fell."