(French, from the Latin *carta*), in Architecture and Sculpture, an ornament representing a scroll of paper. It only differs from a modillion in that the latter is set under the cornice in wainscoting, and the former under the cornice at the eaves of a house.

in the military art, a case of wood, about three inches thick at the bottom, girt with marline, and containing about 400 musket balls, besides six or eight iron balls of a pound weight, to be fired from a howitzer, for the defence of a pass, &c.

A cartouche is sometimes made of a globular form, and filled with a ball of a pound weight; sometimes it is made for guns, and filled with balls of half or a quarter of a pound weight (according to the size of the gun), tied in the form of a bunch of grapes on a tampion of wood, and coated over. Cartouche likewise denotes a portable box for charges. (See Cartridge-Box.) Also a military pass given to a soldier going on furlough.

in hieroglyphics, is the term applied by the French savans to the elliptical ring or oval which incloses every proper name in a monumental inscription. In the hieratic and demotic, encial, or civil forms of writing, the cartouche or oval degenerates into rude brackets.