360                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
	fests their proficiency in the art ; and several other examples of Saxon skill in cloisonné enamelling ornament our col­lections. This peculiar method yet lingers in Algeria ; a tradition of Byzantine dominion. Kahyle-made bracelets were lately shown me, adorned at intervals with square plaques in silver encrusted with cloissoné enamels so purely Byzantine both in pattern and in technique that had they been found in this soil they would infallibly have been put down as importations from Constantinople prior to the Norman Conquest. The third and modern manner of enamelling upon a smooth surface came later into use, not before the middle of the 15th century, being merely an adaptation to copper of the Moresco invention of painting with enamel colours upon a ground of stanniferous glaze laid over earthenware, which the Italians of those times were carrying out with so much success in their majolica. In this last development of the process the vitreous glaze was merely laid on like water-colours upon the polished copper, with no longer any bed traced to direct it, the dexterous application of the fire alone preventing the several colours from flowing, when fused, out of their proper positions. Of this style the best types are the pieces of Limoges work, now so much sought after, specimens of which appear soon after 1450, that is contempo­raneously with the beginning of the majolica manufacture in Italy ; but the new method only attained perfection in the middle of the next century, when the paintings of the Rémonds display a manner as fine as that of their Italian rivals in the other branch of glaze ornamentation. Some nicely-finished paintings in this style may be found adorning jewels of the Cinque-cento ; but it was not before the age of Louis XIV. that the French, the great masters in this art, headed by the inimitable Petitot, produced miniatures