rs into the composition of all three surnames.
Hufnagel (hoof-nail) has signed his pictures with a horse-shoe nail,
sometimes crossed, sometimes curiously intertwined with the letters of
his Christian name. Scharnagel has combined with a nail the figure of
a spade or shovel (_schar_); while Nothnagel distinguishes himself
from both by prefixing the letter N to their common emblem.

There is more of delicacy and ingenuity in the device employed by a
female wood-engraver in the beginning of the sixteenth century,
Isabella Quatrepomme (four-apple.) She was accustomed to sign her
works with a neat and spirited sketch of an apple, marked with the
numeral IV. This mark is found upon some old French woodcuts still in
existence. There was some similar allusion, we have no doubt,
concealed in the device of John Maria Pomedello, an Italian engraver
of the time of Leo X. and Clement VII.; it has occasioned much
speculation to the learned in these matters, but we must confess our
inability to decipher all its significance. Nor was the use of these
punning emblems confined to masters of the fine arts. Printers, too,
frequently introduced them. The symbols of the olive, the sword, the
dolphin, &c. so familiar to all bibliographers, had their origin in
this fanciful taste; and a more direct example than any--the leading
feature of which is a rude image of a spur--is to be found in the
imprint of the curious old German books published by Hans Sporer
(spur-maker) during the very first years after the introduction of
printing into Germany. Editions of books, with this characteristic
imprint, still reckon among the choicest gems in a German
book-collector's library, of what the amateurs in this department have
chosen to call _Incunabeln_.

To those who have given any attention to the deciphering of
illustrated enigmas, many of the early monograms might furnish
considerable amusement. That of the rather obscure artist, Colioloro,
is a perfect counterpart of the most elaborate and fanciful of the
modern enigmas. The curious combination, not alone of words, but of
single letters, with the pictorial emblems, is fully as fanciful as
any which we remember to have seen, even among those of the Leipsic
_Illustrirte Zeitung_, which seems to bestow more attention on the
subject than any of its contemporaries.

It must be remembered, that the artist's full name is Artigli Coscia
Colioloro. The device begins with a confused heap of birds' claws,