At first glance this appears to be a box of flat cedar refill pencils, such as the kind shown in two previous posts. This box was 1/4 gross and still has a bit of the padding on the inside top to protect the points.

The refills have the same slightly curved profile as the other pocket pencils, and if you look closely you can see a very small taper at the opposite end, which accommodates being fitted into a holder:

What’s amazing is that these refills are only about half the width of the “regular” flat pocket pencils, which are small enough to begin with. The smaller pencil has a width of about 5 mm and a height of about 2 mm:

Pocket/waistcoat pencils and holders were already manufactured in a small form factor for the sake of convenience, so it’s hard to imagine how much more convenient-er these pencils are meant to be. Perhaps they were made for double-ended pencil/ink pens, but I haven’t seen one yet.