We may miss the finer insight into human nature and the delicate touch in drawing character which Terence presents to us in his reproductions of Menander, but there is wonderful life and vigour and considerable variety in the Plautine embodiments of these different types.
A large variety of materials have been used in their manufacture by different peoples at different times - painted linen and shavings of stained horn by the Egyptians, gold and silver by the Romans, rice-paper by the Chinese, silkworm cocoons in Italy, the plumage of highly coloured birds in South America, wax, small tinted shells, &c. At the beginning of the 8th century the French, who originally learnt the art from the Italians, made great advances in the accuracy of their reproductions, and towards the end of that century the Paris manufacturers enjoyed a world-wide reputation.
In 1912, in collaboration with his wife, he published as a sumptuous folio, with reproductions of the illustrations of the first edition (1556), an English translation of Agricola's De Re Metallica.
Berthelot gives reproductions of the British Museum MSS.
The chief features of the museum are collections of the fossils, birds and flora of Wales and of obsolete Welsh domestic appliances, casts of the pre-Norman monuments of Wales, and reproductions of metal and ivory work illustrating various periods of art and civilization.