11 FEBRUARY 1899, Page 26

The Portfolio Foreign Armour in England. By F. Starkie Gardner.

(Seeley and Co. 3s. 6c1.)—In this monograph Mr. Gardner tells us that chain-mail is the earliest known form of armour, and that the knowledge of it was brought from the East into Western Europe by the Vikings. It was not a very effectual protection against arrows, so by degrees its place was taken by plate-armour, which last was brought to perfection in the second half of the fifteenth century.