"What is the earliest known instance of the use of a _beaver
hat_ in England?"

(236}Fairholt (_Costume in England_) says, the earliest notice
of it is in the reign of Elizabeth, and gives the following
quotation from Stubbe's _Anatomy of Abuses,_ 1580:--

"And as the fashions be rare and strange, so is the stuff
whereof their hats be made divers also; for some are
of silk, some of velvet, some of taffetie, some of sarcenet,
some of wool, and, which is more curious, some of a certain
kind of fine haire; these they call _bever hattes_, of
xx, xxx, or xl shillings price, fetched from beyond the seas,
from whence a great sort of other varieties doe come besides."

GASTROS.


_Meaning of "Pisan."_--Mr. Turner (No. 7. p.100.) asks the
meaning of the term _pisan_, used in old records for some part
of defensive armour.

Meyrick (_Ancient Armour_, vol. i. p. 155, 2d ed.) gives a
curious and interesting inventory of the arms and armour of Louis le
Hutin, King of France, taken in the year 1316, in which we find,
"Item 3 coloretes _Pizanes_ de jazeran d'acier." He describes
_pizane_ (otherwise written _pizaine, pusen, pesen_) as a
collar made, or much in fashion, at Pisa. The jazeran armour was
formed of overlapping plates. In the metrical romance of _Kyng
Alisaunder_, edited by Webber, occur the lines--