These characters seemed to have a similar puzzle. Excerpt from The Leather Funnel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
"That is a curious thing," I remarked. "What is the history of that?"
"Ah!" said he, "it is the very question which I have had occasion to ask myself. I would give a good deal to know. Take it in your hands and examine it."
I did so, and found that what I had imagined to be wood was in reality leather, though age had dried it into an extreme hardness. It was a large funnel, and might hold a quart when full. The brass rim encircled the wide end, but the narrow was also tipped with metal.
"What do you make of it?" asked Dacre.
"I should imagine that it belonged to some vintner or maltster in the Middle Ages," said I. "I have seen in England leathern drinking flagons of the seventeenth century - 'black jacks' as they were called - which were of the same colour and hardness as this filler."
