The late Mr. Bowes, of Liverpool, had some very fine ornamental yano ne in his collection. M. Gillot in Paris was equally fortunate; but that greatest collection of Japanese metalwork and sword furniture in Europe, the Kunstgewerbe at Hamburg, has no yano ne; nor yet the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, depositaries both of unique treasures in blade and sword furniture. Mr. William J. Walters, who assembled the first great collection of Oriental art in America, the father of all collectors, had a pair of exquisitely sculptured yano ne made by the Kōtō swordsmith, Akihira, simply as examples to complete his collection of Japanese blades. Mr. Howard Mansfield of New York, that early connoisseur of and passionate appreciator of Japanese art, possesses several large yano ne made by the greatest swordsmiths of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—treasures that have never

been neglected, but always kept oiled and polished as brilliantly as sword-blades. Mr. Charles Stewart Smith of New York, known for his gifts of Japanese porcelain to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and gifts of Japanese prints to the Public Library, possesses a small stand of yano ne of exceptional merit, each piece the work of some master of blades. Japanese connoisseurs, knowing the rarity of their occurrence in Japan, are almost incredulous when they hear of the Van Horne collection numbering more than three hundred. It is a marvel to them how the one collection of two hundred arrow-heads was ever assembled in Japan before passing into his possession. The late Mr. Heber Bishop, of New York, who collected Oriental metalwork as assiduously as jade, had several fine specimens, but greatly regretted his lack of open-work specimens.