s of honour,
and motley personages; the shield painters drew arms, garlands, and
ciphers, on more than a hundred standards. On the shooting ground the
lists were marked; wooden boards brightly coloured, and adorned
with representations of fir-trees, garlands, and colonnades; the
interior of the shooting-house was newly painted, and later carpeted;
shooting-stands and pavilions erected for the shooters, and clerks
booths; outside the lists there were kitchens, bowling-grounds and
booths; also a spring for the water-drinkers, which, in case of need,
was newly dug. Especial care was taken, at these cross-bow meetings, of
the small target where the bull's-eye was. As these cross-bow meetings
were in all respects arranged in the most finished style, and were a
pattern for other similar shooting-meetings, we will describe many of
their usages. The target place was a large wooden building, that
represented the front of a house with doors and many stories, or looked
like a triumphal arch, or a temple with cupola towers, or sometimes
like the high wooden altar of the sixteenth century, all beautifully
painted with the colours of the city or country, ornamented with coats
of arms and figures. At Strasburg, in 1576, there stood great
sculptures, a griffin and a lion keeping watch on each side; beneath,
in the middle of the building, was the butt, either covered with some
dark colour or canvas. It could be turned round by mechanism, in order
that after each course the bolts might be drawn out without danger, and
the butt provided with a new circular plate, for the next shooting
meeting of the society. Sometimes the whole heavy building which rose
above it was movable, and turned to face the rows of seats for the
different divisions of shooters. Beside the butt itself, there were in
the building sometimes small projecting guard-houses, or little
turrets, for the markers, from which they could watch the target
without being hit. At the top of the building there was a complicated
clock, with the ciphers from one to four on the dial-plate, and over it
a bell. On the highest point stood generally a movable carved figure,
often Fortune on a ball (for example, in 1576, at Strasburg; 1586, at
Ratisbon; in 1614, at Dresden), which after a bad shot turned her back
on the shooter; or as at Coburg, in 1614, a mannikin on a tower, who
after a good shot waved a banner, or for a bad shot mockingly bit his
thumb.

When these preparations of the h